
Class F_1L'L___ 



Cojjyiiglitl^^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE ALASKA FRONTIER 




British Admiralty Chart, Published June 2ist, 1S77, under the Superintendence of 
Captain F.J. Evans, R. N., Hydrographer, and Corrected to August ist, 1901. 



MAP No. 1. 



THE 



ALASKA FRONTIER 



Thus we wish to retain, and 
the English Companies wish 
to acquire. — Count Nesselrode. 



BY 



THOMAS WILLING BALCH 

A. B. (Harvard) 
Member of the Philadelphia Bar 



Philadelphia 

ALLEN, LANE AND SCOTT 

1903 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAR 17 1903 

Copyiit;ht tii'ay 

CLASS Ci~ XXc. No. 

COPY B. 



Copyright, igo2, by 
THOMAS WILLING BALCH 






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N^ 



\ 



Press of 

ALLEN, LANE AND SCOTT, 

Philadelphia, Pa. 



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To THE Memory 

OF 

WILLIAM H. SEWARD 

AND 

CHARLES SUMNER 

TO WHOM 

The United States owes Alaska 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



This monograph was prepared with the object 
of stating briefly but emphatically the title of the 
United States to a continuous, unbroken lisiere or 
strip of territory on the north west American con- 
tinental shore between Mount Saint Ehas and fifty- 
four degrees forty minutes north latitude. In Au- 
gust, 1898, the Anglo-American Joint High Commis- 
sion assembled at Quebec, and soon after Canada 
formally made claim to a large slice of the Terri- 
tory of Alaska. These demands put forth by Can- 
ada to the territory of a neighboring and friendly 
power are a serious thing, and would imply that 
the Canadian Government possesses substantial facts 
upon which to base its claims. But up to the pres- 
ent time the Canadians have not advanced in sup- 
port of their contentions anything but a nebulous 
maze of alleged facts. Their whole argument is 
founded upon a quibble. If the Canadian Govern- 
ment has any serious and tangible proofs with 
which to support its claims, it has not yet made 
them public. 

Nevertheless, owing to the frequent repetition of 
the myth started in Canada about 1884 — that the 



Xll INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

United States have usurped along the eastern side 
of the Alaskan lisiere territory which legally be- 
longs to Canada — a large part of the Canadian 
people, especially in British Columbia and Ontario, 
have gradually come to believe that this fiction is 
true and based upon sound facts. And within the 
last few years in England, likewise, some people 
are beginning to credit the Canadian claims upon 
Alaska. The growth of this sentiment, however, is 
founded upon a partial knowledge of the facts in- 
volved. This is due to the imperfect manner in 
which, up to now, this subject has been presented 
to the Canadian and the English peoples. The 
public men and publicists who have argued in fa- 
vor of the Canadian demands have curtailed and 
omitted important and vital facts. For instance, 
when they review the negotiations that resulted in 
the Treaty of 1825, they do not consider those ne- 
gotiations as a whole, but only parts of them. 
They do not rebut the evidence afforded by the 
many Canadian, English, French, German, Russian 
and other maps which mark the frontier line claimed 
by the United States. Why has no Canadian con- 
sidered chart number jZj of the British Admiralty, 
which in 1901, three years after the Quebec Confer- 
ence assembled, marks the frontier so as to give 
the United States a continuous, unbroken lisiere 
above fifty-four degrees forty minutes ? 

The facts and the evidence upon which this work 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. Xlll 

is based were collected in Alaska, London, Edin- 
burgh, Paris, Berlin, Saint Petersburg and many 
Other places. The authorities are cited so that in 
case I have made any mistakes or fallen into any 
errors, they may be pointed out and corrected, 
A paper. La Frontier e Alaska- Canadiemie, which 
was printed in the Revue de Droit International, 
January, 1902 (Bruxelles), and another, the Alasko- 
Canadian Frontier, which was published in the 
yournal of the Franklin Institute, March, 1902, 
(Philadelphia), are in part incorporated in this work. 
Re-prints of this latter paper were sent in the 
spring of 1902 to all the members of the Fifty- 
seventh Congress : ten thousand copies were dis- 
tributed throughout the United States ; and from 
many newspapers I received vigorous editorial sup- 
port. In the preparation of the present monograph 
I have received most courteous aid from every one 
to whom I applied at the Bibliotheque Nationale at 
Paris, the Sachsische Konigliche Offentliche Bibliothek 
at Dresden, the Library of Congress at Washington, 
the Library Company of Philadelphia (including the 
Ridgway Branch,) the Harvard University Library, the 
University of Pennsylvania Library and the Philadelphia 
Law Library. I have received also help and encour- 
agement in one way or another from C. L. Andrews, 
Esq., of Alaska, Colonel William R. Holloway, our 
Consul-General at Saint Petersburg, Walker Ken- 
nedy, Esq., of Memphis, Tenn., Frank Nicholls 



XIV INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

Kennin, Esq., a Barrister at Toronto and a member 
of the Illinois Bar, A. L. McDonald, Esq., of San 
Francisco, T. C. Mendenhall, Esq., President of the 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, 
Monsieur le Juge Nys, Vice-President of the Court 
of Brussels, P. Lee Phillips, Esq., of the Library of 
Congress, John Wallace Riddle, Esq., our Charge 
d' Affaires at Saint Petersburg, the Hon. PVederick 
W. Seward, ex-Assistant Secretary of State, of Mont- 
rose-on-the-Hudson, the Hon. Charlemagne Tower, 
recently our Ambassador at Saint Petersburg and 
now Ambassador at Berlin, O. H. Tittmann, Esq., 
Chief of the United States Coast and Geodetic 
Survey, George W. Van Siclen, Esq., of Cornwall, 
N.Y. ; and Edwin Swift Balch, P2sq., Wharton Barker, 
Esq., Colonel Augustus C. Buell, Charles H. Cramp, 
Esq., L. Clarke Davis, Esq., George Peirce, Esq., 
and Harvey M. Watts, Esq., of Philadelphia; and 
other gentlemen at home and abroad whom I am 
not at liberty to name. 

On page 46 on the seventh line from the bottom 
the J^ussi'an American Company is meant. 

The language of the treaty which is given both 
in the orioinal French and in the EnoHsh transla- 
tion, is of itself sufficient to maintain the American 
claim ; but the history of the negotiations which re- 
sulted in the execution of that instrument, the con- 
temporary facts, and the maps which are here for 
the most part for the first time grouped together. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. XV 

exclude the possibility of honest doubt as to the 
validity of the American title. It is not extrava- 
gant to say that any one who will take the trouble 
to master the facts, will agree that the pretence that 
the question of right should be submitted to an Inter- 
national Joint Commission or to an International 
Arbitration is as unreasonable as would be such a 
demand for the settlement of the question of the 
ownership of one of the original Thirteen States. 
This work was undertaken with the purpose of 
placing in a concise form before the American 
people the facts involved in this case. And I hope 
that every good American will take a real interest 
in not seeing this question settled in the dark and 
will lend a hand in waking up the American people 
to what is going on. For the question is well 
summed up in the words of Count Nesselrode, 
"Thus we wish to retain, and the English com- 
panies wish to acquire." 

T. W. B. 

Philadelphia, January loth, 1903. 



THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



THE advance of the United States and of Eng- 
land across the continent of North America 
towards the Pacific Ocean, of Spain along the Pa- 
cific coast towards the north, and of Russia across 
Siberia to the east, brought about in the first 
quarter of the nineteenth century a clashing of 
interest between these powers over the owner- 
ship of the north-west coast of America and its 
hinterland. 

The Americans, Lewis and Clark, crossed the con- 
tinent and discovered the Columbia River, and thus 
by right of discovery, began the claims of the 
United States upon the north west coast. What- 
ever rights France had in the far north west 
reverted to the United States by the Louisiana 
purchase in 1803. The claims of Spain to the ter- 
ritory lying to the north of California were merged 
by treaty in 18 19 in those of the United States. 
The Hudson's Bay Company in the quest for 
furs sent its trappers and advanced its trading 
posts further and further west ; and, as the author- 
ized agent of the British Crown, it carried the sov- 
ereignty of the English King across the continent 



2 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

nearer and nearer to the Pacific. Cook, Vancou- 
ver and other English seamen, too, sailed along the 
North American shore washed by the Pacific Ocean. 
The Russian Cossacks, first under an ataman named 
Yermak, gradually bore, in their search for the 
valuable sable skins, the sway of the " Great 
White Tsar " across Siberia to the waters of the 
Pacific, thus proving that Bishop Berkeley was 
only half right when he wrote — ''Westward the 
course of empire holds its way." Then with the 
exploring expedition commanded by the Cossack, 
Deshneff,^ who probably sailed through Bering Strait 
in 1648,^ and with that led in 1741 by Bering, the 

'A. Faustini : Una Questione Artica, Roma, 1902 : Estratto 
della Rivista Italo- Americana, Anno I., Fasc. II., Luglio, 1902. 

* The Strait of Anian or Bering Strait was known to the Euro- 
pean world apparently long before Deshneff's expedition, for 
on a number of maps of the second half of the sixteenth and the 
first half of the seventeenth centuries the strait is marked, and 
Alaska itself is drawn approximately correctly. 
\/ Theatrum orbis terrarum Ant. Abrah. Ortellii. Antwerpia 
MDLXX. (The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.) 
The map entitled " Typus Orbis Terrarum" gives the Strait of 
Anian about where Bering Strait is. Theatrum Orbis Te?'rarum. 
Abrahamus Ortelius Antverpianus, eius Majistatis Geographius 
[1579] (Kon. Oef Bib. Dresden). In the map " Tartariae sive 
Magni Chami Regni typus ' ' Asia runs up beyond 80° N. lat. 
America on the contrary only goes to about 55° N. lat. They 
are divided by the " Stretto di Anian." The shape of both Asia 
and America is very like the reality and the "Stretto di Anian " 
in its shape and position, strongly suggests Bering Strait. 

Oost ende West- Indische Spieghel waer in beschreven werden 
de twee laetste navigatien * * * de eene door den vermaerden 



4 



EARLY EXPLORERS. 3 

Dane, across the Pacific to the great land, the 
bolshaid zemlia, to the east, the Russians began 
to explore and then to settle on the American 
continent. 

The United States, England and Russia continued 
to affirm their sovereignty to greater and greater 
areas of land in the north-west part of the Amer- 
ican continent. And Russia even went so far as 
to assert her right to the absolute dominion over 
Bering Sea and a large extent of the northern part 
of the Pacific Ocean. These pretensions to the ex- 
clusive sovereignty of a part of the high seas were 
made in an Ukase issued in 1821 by the Em- 
peror Alexander the First. In addition to claiming 



Zeeheldt /oris van Spilbers^en ***</,? andere ghedaen by 
Jacob Le Maire. Amsterdam, Jan Janssz, MDCXXI. The 
" Nova Totius Orbis Terrarum " shows the Arctic coast of Asia, 
the highest point being Novaya ZemUa, in about 79° N. lat. 
This is joined to Asia. The north point is marked "T Vlissin- 
gerhoot." Between 48° N. lat., and 60° N.lat. are straits between 
Asia and America : they are narrowest in about 50° N. lat. 
\i Gerardi Mercatoris et J. Hondii Atlas, Amsterdam, Johan 
Jannson und Henricus Hondius. MDCXXXIII. (Kon. Oef. 
Bib. Dresden). In German. Colored Maps. In the map " Tar- 
taris" the "Anian Fretum " extends between about 55° to 62° 
N. lat, with "Americae Pars" on one side, and " Tenduc, Reg- 
num in quo Christiani regnabant anno 1 290 ' ' on the other. The 
portion of America on the map distincdy resembles Alaska. 

A Chronological History of the Voyages into the Arctic 
Regions, by John Barrow (London, John Murray, 1818) 
appendix. No. II. Barrow gives the narradve of the discovery 
of the Strait of Anian by Captain Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado 
in the year 1588. 



4 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

exclusive jurisdiction for Russia in the waters of 
Bering Sea and a large part of the northern portion 
of the Pacific Ocean, he extended also at the same 
time the territorial claims of Russia from the fifty- 
fifth degree, as claimed by the Ukase of 1799 
issued by the Emperor Paul, down to the fifty-first 
degree of north latitude. Against the claims of 
sovereignty on both land and sea asserted in the 
Ukase of 1821 by the Muscovite Empire, both the 
American and the English Governments entered 
energetic protests. The differences between the 
United States and Russia were amicably arranged 
by treaty in 1824. On April 5/17 of that year, 
Mr. Middleton, the United States Minister at Saint 
Petersburg, concluded with Count Nesselrode and 
M. de Poletica a convention which recognized the 
free navigation of the Northern Pacific Ocean, and 
fixed the latitude of fifty-four degrees forty minutes 
north as the line that should divide the " spheres 
of influence " of the United States and Russia in 
North West America. All below that parallel, 
Russia agreed to leave to the United States to 
contest with Great Britain, and all above it the 
United States consented to leave to Russia to dis- 
pute with England.^ 

^ On this point see the memorandum that Mr. Middleton sub- 
mitted to Count Nesselrode at the fourth conference which pre- 
ceded the signature of the treaty. Fur Seal Arbitratioti : Vol- 
ume V. , page 268. 



THE TREATY OF I 825. 5 

It was not until about a year later, after a long 
and exhaustive series of negotiations, that the Brit- 
ish and the Muscovite Governments finally settled 
their conflicting territorial claims. And in those 
negotiations the chief object that the English Gov- 
ernment had in view was to obtain from the Mus- 
covite Government a retraction of the claims of the 
latter to absolute jurisdiction over Bering Sea and 
part of the Pacific. By a treaty signed at Saint 
Petersburg, February 16/28, 1825, by Count Nessel- 
rode and Monsieur de Poletica, acting for Russia, 
and Sir Stratford Canning, in behalf of Great Brit- 
ain, the Muscovite Government rescinded its claim 
to sovereignty over a part of the high seas and 
the two governments arranged for a definite fron- 
tier between their respective North American pos- 
sessions. According to Articles three and four of 
this treaty, this frontier was drawn from the Arctic 
Ocean, along the meridian of one hundred and 
forty-one degrees west longitude to Mount Saint 
Elias, and then was to follow the crest of the 

As the Fur Seal Arbitration will often be cited in the course 
of this treatise, it is worth while to give here the full title : Fur 
Seal Arbitration : Proceedings of the Tribunal of Arbitration 
convened at Paris under the treaty between the United States of 
America and Great Britain, concluded at Washington, Febru- 
ary 2g, iSg^, for the Deterniinatio7i of questions between the 
two governments concerning the jurisdictional rights of the 
United States in the Waters of Bering Sea : Washington, 
Government Printing Office ; 1895. 



THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



mountains running parallel to the coast, to the 
head of the Portland Channel, and down that 
sinuosity to the ocean in fifty-four degrees forty 
minutes north latitude. But if at any point the 
crest of the mountains proved to be at a greater 
distance than ten marine leagues from the shore, 
then the frontier should run parallel to the sinu- 
osities of the coast at a distance of ten marine 
leagues inland, but never further than that from 
the shore.* (See Map No. 2.) 

* Owing to the importance of the French text, which the British 
Government in its printed argument in the Bering Sea Seal Fish- 
eries Case {Ftir Seal Arbitration, Volume IV. , page 500) recog- 
nized as the official version, and the fact that French is the 
diplomatic language of the world, which was probably much 
more the case in 1825 than to-day, the French version is given 
here in parallel columns with the English translation of the most 
important articles. 



"Article III. 

" La ligne de demarcation entre 
les possessions des Hautes Parties 
Contractantes sur la cote du conti- 
nent et les lies de I' Am^rique nord- 
ouest, sera trac(^e ainsi qu'il suit : 

"A partir du point le plus meri- 
dional de I'iledite Prince of Wales 
lequel point se trouve sous le par- 
anoic du 54« degre 40 minutes de 
latitude nord, et entre le 131^ et le 
133* degre de longitude ouest (nid- 
ridien de Greenwich), la dite ligne 
remontera au nord le long de la 
passe dite Portland Channel, jus- 
qu'au point de la terre ferme oil 
elie atteint le 56® degrd de latitude 
nord ; de ce dernier point la ligne 
de demarcation suivra la crete des 
montagnes situ^es parallelement a 



"Article IIL 

"The line of demarcation be- 
tween the possessions of the High 
Contracting Parties upon the coast 
of the continent and the islands of 
America to the northwest, shall be 
drawn in the manner following : 

"Commencing from the south- 
ernmost point of the island called 
Prince of Wales Island, which 
point lies in the parallel of fifty- 
four degrees forty minutes north 
latitude, and between the one hun- 
dred and thirty-first and the one 
hundred and thirt>'-third degree of 
west longitude (Meridian of Green- 
wich), the said line shall ascend to 
the north along the channel called 
Portland Channel, as far as the 
point of the continent where it 




yrepared in the Office of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Treastiry Vefiartmenl . 

United States and English Boundary Claims. 

MAP No. 2. 



8 



THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



For more than half a century the British Empire 



la c6te, jusqu'au point d'intersec- 
tion du 141° degr^ de longitude 
ouest (m^me meridian) , et, finale- 
ment,du dit point d'intersection, la 
m^me ligne ni^ridienne de 141^ de- 
gr^ formera, dans son prolonge- 
ment jusqu'a la Mer Glaciale, la 
limite entre les possessions Russes 
et Britanniques sur le continent de 
I'Amdrique nord-ouest. 



"Article IV. 

" II est entendu, par rapport a la 
ligne de d(§marcation d(5terniini5e 
dans r Article prt^cedent : 

"i". Que rile dite Prince of 
Wales appartiendra toute enticre 
h la Russie. 

"2°. Que partout oh la crete 
des montagnes qui s'^tendent dans 
une direction parallele ^ la cote 
depuis le 56® degrd de latitude 
nord au point d'intersection du 
141* degr^ de longitude ouest, se 
trouveroit h la distance de plus de 
10 lieues marines de I'ocean, la 
limite entre les possessions Britan- 
niques et la lisi^re de c6te men- 
tionnt^e ci-dessus comme devant 
appartenir a la Russie, sera formt^e 
par une ligne parallele aux sinu- 
osit^s de la c6te, et qui ne poura 
jamais en 6tre ^>Ioign^e que de 10 
lieues marines." 



strikes the fifty sixth degree of 
north latitude ; from this last 
mentioned point, the line of de- 
marcation shall follow the sum- 
mit of the mountains situated 
parallel to the coast, as far as the 
point of intersection of the one 
hundred and forty-first degree of 
west longitude (of the same me- 
ridian) ; and, finally, from the said 
point of intersection, the said me- 
ridian line of the one hundred and 
forty-first degree, in its prolonga- 
tion as far as the Frozen Ocean, 
shall form the limit between the 
Russian and British Possessions on 
the continent of America to the 
northwest. 

"Article IV. 

"With reference to the line of 
demarcation laid down in the pre- 
ceding Article, it is understood : 

"First. That the island called 
Prince of Wales Island shall be- 
long wholly to Russia. 

"Second. That, wherever the 
summit of the mountains which 
extend in a direction parallel to 
the coast, from the fifty-sixth de- 
gree of north latitude to the point 
of intersection of the one hundred 
and forty-first degree of west long- 
itude, shall prove to be at the dis- 
tance of more than ten marine 
leagues from the ocean, the limit 
between the British Possessions 
and the line of coast which is to 
belong to Russia, as above men- 
tioned, shall be formed by a line 
parallel to the windings {^sitiuos- 
ites"] of the coast, and which shall 
never exceed the distance of ten 
marine leagues therefrom." 



THE ANGLO-RUSSIAN NEGOTIATIONS. 9 

never contested the interpretation openly proclaimed 
by both the Muscovite and the United States Govern- 
ments that under Articles three and four of the treaty 
of 1825, first Russia and later — after the cession of 
Russian America or Alaska in 1867 to the American 
Union — the United States were entitled to a strip of 
territory or lisiere on the mainland from the Portland 
Channel or Canal in the south up to Mount Saint 
Elias in the north so as to cut off absolutely the 
British possessions from access to the sea above the 
point of fifty-four degrees forty minutes. In August, 
1898, for the first time, the British Empire formally 
claimed at the Quebec Conference that the proper 
reading of those two articles entitled Canada to the 
upper part of most or all of the fiords between the 

Portland Canal and Mount Saint Elias.^ (See Map 
No. 2.) 

A review of the negotiations during the years 1822, 

1823, 1824 and 1825 between Count Nesselrode and 

M. de Poletica in behalf of Russia, and first of Sir 

Concerning the importance of French as the language of diplo- 
macy, see : 

Regies Internationales et Diplomatie de la Mer par Theodore 
Ortolan, capitaine de Frigate, Chevalier de la 1' Legion d' Hon- 
neur : Second edition, Paris, 1853, Volume I., page no. 

Precis du Droit des Gens moderne de l' Europe par G. F. 
Martens: Paris, 1804, Volume II., §179, page 25. 

^ The Alaskan Boundary by the Hon. John W. Foster: The 
Natio7ial Geographic Magazine, November, 1899, Washington, 
page 453. 



lO THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Charles Bagot and afterwards of Mr. Stratford Can- 
nine, later Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, for Great Brit- 
ain, shows clearly that the agreement finally reached 
as embodied in the treaty of 1825 was intended to ex- 
clude the British North American territory from all 
access to the sea above the point of fifty-four degrees 
forty minutes. From the ver}' inception of the negotia- 
tions, the Russians insisted upon the possession for 
Russia of a strip or lisiere on the mainland from the 
Portland Canal up to Mount Saint Elias expressly 
to shut off England from access to the sea at all 
points north of the Portland Canal. Sir Charles 
Bagot, on behalf of England, fought strenuously to 
keep open a free outlet to the sea as far north above 
the line of fifty-four degrees forty minutes as possible. 
(See map No. 3.) First he proposed that the line 
of territorial demarcation between the two countries 
should run "through Chatham Strait to the head of 
Lynn Canal, thence northwest to the 140th degree of 
longitude west of Greenwich, and thence along that 
degree of longitude to the Polar Sea."*^ To this 
Count Nesselrode and M. de Poletica replied with 
a contrc-projct in which they proposed that the 
frontier line, beginning at the southern end of 
Prince of Wales Island, should ascend the Port- 
land Canal up to the mountains, that then from 
that point it should follow the mountains parallel 

^Fnr Seal Arbitration^ Volume IV., page 424. 




Prepared in the Office of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Treasury Department. 

Sir C. Bagot's Three Proposed Boundaries, 1824. 

MAP No. 3. 



12 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

to the sinuosities of the coast up to the one hun- 
dred and thirty-ninth degree of longitude west from 
Greenwich, and then follow that degree of longitude 
to the north.' 

At the next conference Sir Charles Bagot gave 
Count Nesselrode and M. de Poletica a written modi- 
fication of his first proposition. In this new pro- 
posal he first stated that the frontier that they de- 
manded would deprive Great Britain of sovereignty 
over all the anses and small bays that lie between 
the fifty-sixth degree and the fifty-fourth degree 
forty minutes^ of latitude; that owing to the prox- 
imity of these fiords and estuaries to the interior 
posts of the Hudson's Bay Company, they would 
be of essential importance to the commerce of that 
Company ; while on the other hand, the Russian 
American Company had posts neither on the main- 
land between those degrees of latitude, nor even on 
the neighboring islands. Sir Charles proposed that 
the line of separation should pass through " the mid- 
dle of the canal that separates Prince of Wales Island 
and Duke of York Island from all the islands situ- 
ated to the north of the said islands until it [the line] 
touches the mainland." Then advancing in the same 
direction to the east for ten marine leagues, the line 

"^Fiir Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 427. 

* In the American edition, Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV. , 
page 428 "45"' is printed ; this is certainly a typographical error 
for "40'." 



SIR CHARLES BAGOT's THREE PROPOSITIONS. 1 3 

should then ascend towards the north and north- 
west, at a distance of ten marine leagues from the 
shore, following the sinuosities of the coast up to 
the one hundred and fortieth degree of longitude 
west from Greenwich and then up to the north.^ 

At the succeeding conference the Russian plenipo- 
tentiaries again insisted upon their original proposal 
that the frontier line should ascend the Portland 
Canal and then follow the mountains bordering the 
coast line. 

Sir Charles Bagot then brought forward a third 
boundary line that, passing up Duke of Clarence 
Sound and then running from west to east along the 
strait separating Prince of Wales Island and Duke 
of York Island to the north, should then advance 
to the north and the north-west in the way already 
proposed.^" 

But again the Russian diplomats insisted on their 
original proposition. On April 17th, 1824,^^ Count 
Nesselrode addressed to Count Lieven, the Russian 
Ambassador at London, a long and exhaustive re- 
view of the negotiations with Sir Charles Bagot, and 
instructed Count Lieven to press the Russian views 
upon the English Cabinet. In that communication, 

^ Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV. , page 428. 

" Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV. , page 430. 

" Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 399. In the Ameri- 
can edition this letter is dated 1823, but as the context shows, it 
should be 1824. 



14 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

after speaking of Russia's declaration at the begin- 
ning of the negotiations that she would not insist 
upon the claim to the territory down to the fifty- 
first degree put forward in the Ukase of 1821, and 
that she would be content to maintain the limits 
assigned to Russian America by the Ukase of 1799, 
he went on to say "that consequently the line of 
the fifty-fifth degree of north latitude, would con- 
stitute upon the south the frontier of the States of 
His Imperial Majesty, that upon the continent and 
towards the east, this frontier could run along the 
mountains that follow the sinuosities of the coast 
up to Mount Saint Elias, and that from that point 
up to the Arctic Ocean we would fix the limits of 
the respective possessions according to the line of 
the one hundred and fortieth degree of longitude 
west from Greenwich. 

" In order not to cut Prince of Wales Island, 
which according to this arrangement should belong 
to Russia, we proposed to carry the southern fron- 
tier of our domains to the fifty-fourth degree for- 
tieth minute of latitude and to make it reach the 
coast of the continent at the Pordand Canal whose 
mouth opening on the ocean is at the height of 
Prince of Wales Island and whose origin is in the 
lands between the fifty-fifth degree and fifty-sixth 
degree of latitude." 

Russia, by limiting her demands to those set forth 
in the Ukase of i 799, simply defended claims against 



NESSELRODE TO LIEVEN, 1 824. 1 5 

which, for over twenty years, neither England nor 
any other power had ever made a protest. England, 
on the contrary, sought to establish her right to ter- 
ritory which she had thus passively recognized as 
Russian, and which lay beyond any of her settle- 
ments. Count Nesselrode contrasted the policy of 
the two states in the pithy sentence : " Thus we wish 
to retain, and the English Companies wish to ac- 
quire." 

The negotiators were thus brought face to face 
with their rival claims. The Russians insisted, on 
the one hand, that they must have possession of a 
lisiere or strip of territory on the mainland in order 
to support the Russian establishments on the islands 
and to prevent the Hudson's Bay Company from 
having access to the sea and forming posts and set- 
tlements upon the coast line opposite to the Russian 
Islands ; while Sir Charles Bagot maintained, on the 
other hand, that Great Britain must have such part 
of the coast and inlets north of fifty-four degrees 
forty minutes as would enable the English Com- 
panies and the settlements back from the coast to 
have free access to the fiords and estuaries open- 
ing into the ocean. 

After a few months, Mr. George Canning, the 
English Foreign Secretary, instructed Sir Charles 
Bagot to agree to the Portland Canal as part of the 
frontier line ; but with the reservation, first, that the 
eastern line of demarcation should be so defined as 



1 6 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

to guard against any possibility, owing to subsequent 
geographical discoveries, that it could be drawn at 
a greater distance from the coast than ten marine 
leagues, and second, that the harbor of Novo-Arch- 
angelsk (now Sitka) and the rivers and creeks on 
the continent should remain open forever to British 
commerce. 

During the course of the new negotiations be- 
tween Count Nesselrode and M. de Poletica in 
behalf of Russia, and of Sir Charles Bagot for Eng- 
land, the second of these two points was the main 
object of discussion. Sir Charles was unable to con- 
clude a treaty with the Russian diplomats, for the 
latter refused to agree to open forever the port of 
Novo-Archangelsk to British commerce. Neither 
were they willing to grant to the subjects of Eng- 
land the right forever to navigate and trade along 
the coast of the lisiere that it was proposed Russia 
should have. The British Ambassador, realizing that 
it was impossible for him to negotiate a treaty in 
accordance with his instructions, soon thereafter left 
Saint Petersburg. 

In the latter part of the year 1824, Great Britain 
appointed Mr. Stratford Canning, later Lord Strat- 
ford de Redcliffe, one of the ablest of her diplomats, 
to continue the negotiations left unfinished between 
Sir Charles Bagot, and Count Nesselrode and M. de 
Poletica. When Canning took up the negotiations. 
Great Britain had receded from all her contentions 



THE MOTIVE OF ENGLAND. 1 7 

except as to the width of the Hsiere. In his instruc- 
tions he received power to arrange for a line of 
demarcation that should run along the crest of the 
mountains, except where the mountains were more 
than ten marine leagues from the shore, in which 
case the frontier should follow, at a distance of ten 
marine leagues inland, the sinuosities of the shore. 
With these new instructions, Stratford Canning was 
able to conclude a treaty to which Sir Charles Bagot 
could not have agreed. And on the 16/28 of Feb- 
ruary 1825, Stratford Canning on behalf of Great 
Britain and Count Nesselrode and M. de Poletica 
for Russia, signed a treaty definitely dividing Can- 
ada and Russian America. 

George Canning, towards the end of his instruc- 
tions to Stratford Canning, showed what was the 
chief motive of England in the pending negotia- 
tions with Russia. He wrote : 

** It remains only in recapitulation, to remind 
you of the origin and principles of this whole ne- 
gotiation. 

" It is not on our part, essentially a negotiation 
about limits. 

" It is a demand of the repeal of an offensive and 
unjustifiable arrogation of exclusive jurisdiction over 
an ocean of unmeasured extent; but a demand qual- 
ified and mitigated in its manner, in order that its 
justice may be acknowledged and satisfied without 
soreness or humiliation on the part of Russia. 



1 8 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

** We negotiate about territory to cover the re- 
monstrance upon principle. 

" But any attempt to take undue advantage of 
this voluntary facility, we must oppose." ^'^ 

Thus the chief concern of the English Govern- 
ment was to obtain from that of Russia an official 
disclaimer of the assertion in the Ukase of 1821 that 
the waters of Bering Sea and parts of the north- 
ern Pacific were exclusively Russian waters. Russia 
would not assent to formally recognize the right of 
English ships freely to navigate those seas, unless 
the boundary question was also arranged, and settled 
so as to insure to Russia an unbroken lisiere from 
the Portland Canal up to Mount Saint Elias. And 
on this last point, England, after a long and stub- 
born resistance, finally yielded. 

Much of the trouble that the negotiators of the 
Anglo-Muscovite treaty of 1825 had in agreeing 
upon the eastern boundary of the lisiere was due 
to a lack of knowledge respecting the mountains 
along the northwest American coast. According to 
Vancouver's chart (See Map No. 4), a Russian map 
published in 1802 (See Map No. 5), and other avail- 
able information a mountain range ran along the 
coast not far from the sea.^^ When Stratford Canning 



VI 

13 



'Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 448. 

' We know from the correspondence of Sir Charles Bagot that 
the negotiators knew of the map of 1802. Fur Seal Arbitra- 
tion ^ Volume IV., page 409. 










Vancouver's Chart of the Northwest Coast of America, copied from the 

French Edition of 1799. 

MAP No. 4. 



a^oas as a^jpjcs 



t V*- / 



/ 



C ^ t^vr*^ 



"BT" 




'"^(L^ji^ay^ 



<^>v;^r*y<-' 









t» . , - 'I ^ " - 




Ai<t 9<in^r^if, 



Map published in 1802 by the Russian Quartermaster-General Department 
AT Saint Petersburg, now in the Library of Congress. 

MAP No. 5. 



CONTOUR OF THE COAST. 21 

and Count Nesselrode and M. de Poletica finally 
agreed upon the mountain divide as the frontier 
between the two nations, Canning, acting upon in- 
structions from his cousin, George Canning, who was 
British Secretary of Foreign Affairs, insisted that 
should the summit of the mountains prove to be, 
at any point, more than ten marine leagues from 
the shore, then the line of demarcation should be 
drawn parallel to the sinuosities of the shore at a 
distance of ten marine leagues. This ten league 
limit to the eastward was inserted on purpose, as 
George Canning stated in his instructions to Strat- 
ford Canning to guard England against a possibility 
of having her territory pushed back to the eastward 
a hundred miles or more from the sea in case the 
crest of the mountains was found in reality to lie far 
back from the coast instead of close to it as was then 
supposed. 

The text of the treaty of 1825 is the crucial and 
final statement of how the line of demarcation be- 
tween Alaska and the Dominion of Canada should 
be found. A review of the pourparlers between the 
Russian and the British representatives that culmi- 
nated in the Anglo-Muscovite treaty of 1825 shows 
clearly that the negotiators of that treaty intended 
to include within the Russian territory a lisiere on 
the mainland, stretching from the Portland Channel 
or Canal in the south up to Mount Saint Elias in 
the north ; and extending between those points far 



2 2 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

enough inland to exclude the English possessions 
absolutely from access to the coast line above fifty- 
four degrees forty minutes. Within recent years 
some Canadians have tried to read into that agree- 
ment between Russia and England a meaning radi- 
cally different from the interpretation which all the 
world, including until a few years since even the 
Canadians themselves, understood. Not only are 
there within the text of the treaty itself expressions 
and provisions that place beyond question the fact 
that Britain should not have an access to tide water 
on the northwest coast above fifty-four forty ; but 
also the whole course of history from 1825 until a 
comparatively recent time shows that the authori- 
ties on the British side of the line thought so too. 
And even as recently as August, 1901, the British 
Government set the seal of its approval upon that 
view of what the treaty of 1825 meant by repub- 
lishing Admiralty Chart No. 787, upon which the 
frontier is marked from the head of the Portland 
Canal and then up on the continent to Mount Saint 
Elias so as to include all the sinuosities in their 
entirety within United States territory. (See Map 
No. I.) 

In the ten years succeeding the promulgation of 

the Anglo-Muscovite treaty of 1825, the Russian 

government gave on several official maps a visual 

interpretation of the meaning of Articles three and 

four of the treaty. During the same years, too, both 



EARLY MAPS. 2$ 

the Canadians and the English also issued maps 
drawn by their leading cartographers. All these 
maps interpreted the eastern boundary of the Rus- 
sian lisiere as described in the treaty of 1825, so as 
to give the Muscovite Empire a continuous, un- 
broken strip of land on the continent, extending far 
enough inland so as to include all the sinuosities 
above fifty-four forty within Russian territory. Again 
and again in subsequent years both Canada and 
England reaffirmed upon other maps, many of them 
official publications, the frontier as it was depicted 
in the Russian maps. 

In the year 1825, shortly after the treaty defin- 
ing the frontier between Russian and British North 
America became known, A. Brue, one of the lead- 
ing French cartographers, published at Paris a map 
entitled: "Carte de I'Amerique Septentrionale ; Re- 
digee par A. Brue, Geographe du Roi; Atlas Uni- 
versel, pi. 38." On this map Brue drew the bound- 
ary of Russian America on the continent from the 
top of the Portland Canal at the distance of ten 
marine leagues from tide water round all the sin- 
uosities up to the one hundred and forty-first de- 
gree of longitude, and then along that meridian 
to the north. Two years later, in 1827, the cele- 
brated Russian admiral and navigator, A. J. de 
Krusenstern, pubHshed at Saint Petersburg, "par 
ordre de Sa Majeste Imperiale," a "Carte Gener- 
ale de I'Ocean Pacifique, Hemisphere Boreal." (See 



24 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

map No. 6.) Krusenstern drew on the mainland the 
frontier of Russian America from the top of the Port- 
land Canal round the sinuosities of the shore at a 
distance of ten marine leagues from tide water up 
to the one hundred and forty-first degree of longi- 
tude and then northward along that meridian. Along 
the line of the one hundred and forty-first degree is 
inscribed, "Limites des Possessions Russes et Ang- 
laises d' apres le Traite de 1825." Two years later, 
in 1829, there appeared at Saint Petersburg a map of 
the eastern extremity of Siberia and the north west 
coast of America. This was map "No. 58" (b) " of 
the *' Atlas Geographique de I'Empire de Russie," 
etc., that was prepared by Functionary Piadischeff. 
(See map No. 7.) On this map, Piadischeff drew the 
Russo-British frontier from Mount Saint Elias down 
to the top of the Portland Canal and then along that 
sinuosity down to the sea at fifty-four degrees forty 
minutes, ^^ thereby shutting off Britain from access 
to the sea above fifty-four degrees forty minutes. 

" The reproduction of map "No. 58" (see map No. 7) was 
made from a copy of Piadischeff' s Atlas now in the possession 
of the writer that belonged to Prince Alexander of Hesse, the 
brother of the Empress Alexander the Second of Russia. The 
titles and nomenclature of the Atlas are given both in Russian and 
French. The French title is: Atlas Geographique de T Empire 
de Rtissie, du Royaume de Pologne et du Grand Duche de Fin- 
lande * * * par le Fo7ictionnaire de la <5* Classe Piadischeff, 
employe au Depot Topographique militaire dans P Etat- Major de 
Sa Majeste hnperiale : Commence en 1820 et termi7ie en 182"/, 
revu et cor rig e en 18^4. 



./ 



? JT"??! 



f 4- 



CO 









1 18 i"v^..^ 






I 



id 
1.^ 



ii 

II 




f-S' O, 



'^"v^ 






'^^^bbiy 



*7 v^ -#% 



35*^ 



"*""'«(*'B£ij| 



i>^. 









^o 






Ca*»*' ^ 



I de la Keine 



^^ 







CKirl otters 

itSnffle/iad 



Imperial Russian Map : " Dresse par M. de Krusenstern, Contre-Amiral * * * 
PUBL16 PAR ordre de Sa Majeste Imperials Saint Petersbourg, 1827." 



MAP No. 6. 



>^ ^- «r ^ \ ^ \ - 




Carte Genekalk * * * de la cotk N. W. [su-] de lAmkkkue.' rKEPARED 
AT Saint Petersburg in 1S29, by Functionary Piadischeff 

"AU Dep5t ToPOGRAPHIQUE jnHTAIRE." 

MAP No. 7. 



EARLY MAPS. 27 

Again on the map of Russian America in the 
Atlas of the Russian Evipirc pubHshed b\- the 
Russian War Office in tlie years iS-iO to iS^s. the 
frontier of Alaska is marked as Krusenstern and 
Piadischeff had drawn it.^' (See map No. S.) 

The British Government made no protest agninst 
the way Krusenstern and Piadischeff had marked 
the boundan-. On the contran,-. a few years later, 
in I S3 1, a map \\'as prepared by Joseph Bouchette, 
Jr., " Deput}- Surveyor General of the Province of 
Lower Canada," and published the same year at 
London by James Wyld. geographer to the King, 
and " with His Majest}-'s most gracious and special 
permission most humbly and gratefully dedicated 
* * * to His Most Excellent i^tajest}' King Will- 
iam I\'th H: •<: :i^ compiled from the latest and 
most approved astronomical observations, authori- 
ties, and recent surveys." It reaftirmed the bound- 
Map "No. 60° (a) " of this atlas is entitled. " Carte G^nerale 
de r Empire de Russie," etc. This is a map o{ the whole Russian 
Empire in 1S29. and in the left hand lower corner the boundary 
of the Russian American lisiere is given as on map "No. 58." 
Charles Sumner used this general map of the Empire, "No. 60," in 
preparing his speech in support of the purchase of Alaska in 1S67. 
The copy that he had is now in the Har\'ard University Librar)*. 

'^^ Atlas of Uu Russian Empire. (In Russian.) Map No. S is 
reproduced from "Map No. 63 " of a copy of this atlas, now 
in the possession of the writer, which belonged originally to 
Count Dimitry Petrowitsch Severin. at one time Minister Pleni- 
potentiary of the Emperor of Russia to the King of Bavaria. 



63 



]9o 



995 



Q30 



935 

mar mii'iiiiir 



94o 



94: 



-95o 



M'lllll lll'IIM.H "IIU1«< ' 'g 



•MiMiwi iimir 



.\ E A O li M T 



I>I II 



o K]i: A H :[j 



M E 



P M 




-r70 



'^!" f 11,1..: I' < i"ii'!i|iN' tr. !i -tn^ 

990 995 G3o 



LI.'lJil'H r.ml BTIIIIil I'lMJIli tiniiMi nmiiN']! m.iiii! fiH.'ini Tmn Im»,iw 

935 <24o 945 g5o 



Map of Russian America published in the years 1S30-1835 by the 

Russian War Office. 



MAP No. 8. 




Canadian Map of 1831 : " Compiled * * * by Joseph Bouchette, Jr., 
Deputy Surveyor General of the Province of Lower Canada." 



MAP No. 9. 



30 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

ary as given upon Krusenstern's Imperial map. 
(See Map No. 9.) Duflot de Mofras, who was an 
attache of the French Legation to Mexico, gives 
upon his map of the western coast of America, 
pubHshed in 1844, the same frontier Hne between 
the two empires.^® (See Map No. 10.) Again in 
a " Narrative of a Journey Round the World, 
during the years 1841 and 1842, by Sir George 
Simpson, Governor-in-chief of the Hudson's Bay 
Company's Territories in North America" pub- 
lished at London in 1847,^^ a map in volume one, 
showing the author's route, gives the line of de- 
marcation between the Russian and the English ter- 
ritories as it was laid down by Krusenstern in his 
map of 1827. (See map No. 11.) 

Likewise on the map prepared by Captain Teben- 
koff of the Imperial Russian Navy, which was pub- 
lished in 1849 (see Map No. 12), and on an English 
map to accompany S. S. Hill's Travels in Siberia, 
published at London in 1854 (see Map No. 13), the 
frontier of the Alaskan lisiere is given as Krusen- 
stern and Piadischeff drew it. 

Three years later, in 1857, an investigation into the 

^® The title of de Mofras' s map is : Carte de ta cote de V Amerique 
sur l^ ocean Pacifique septentrional * * * dress^ par M^' 
Dufiot de Mofras, Attache a la Legation de Fraiice cL Mexico 
pour servir h V intelligence de son Voyage d^ exploration, public 
par ordre du Roi * * * Paris, 1844. 

'' London ; Henry Colburn, 1847 : there is a copy in the British 
Museum. 




Map of Duflot de Mofras, 

"Public par ordre du Roi, sous les Auspices de M. le President du Conseil des Ministres et 
de M. le Ministre des Affaires EtrangSres, Paris, 1844." 



MAP No. 10. 




Map in " Narrative of a Journey Round the World," 
BY Sir George Simpson, London, 1847. 



MAP No. 11. 



=%»^ ■- , '/^u~',<^ 










Map prepared by Captain Tebenkoff, of the Imperial Russian Navy, 1849. 

MAP No. 12. 




Map of the Russian Empire to accompany Hill's Travels, 1854. 

MAP No. 13. 



IMPORTANT MAPS. 35 

affairs of the Hudson's Bay Company was held by 
a special committee of the House of Commons. At 
that investigation, Sir George Simpson, who was ex- 
amined, presented a map of the territory in question, 
and, speaking for the Company, said : " There is a 
margin of coast, marked yellow on the map, from 
54° 40' up to Cross Sound, which we have rented 
from the Russian Company." (See Map No. 14.) 
This map shows that the strip of land on the con- 
tinent extended far enough inland to include all 
the sinuosities of the coast so as to exclude, ac- 
cording to the United States claims, the British 
territory altogether from any outlet upon salt water 
above fifty-four degrees forty minutes. 

Also on a Russian Imperial map published in 
1 86 1 (see Map No. 15), the Russian Government 
again claimed, without calling forth any protest from 
the British Government, for its American possessions 
an eastern frontier identical with that it had asserted 
soon after the treaty of 1825 upon the maps of Kru- 
senstern and Piadischeff. 

John Arrowsmith's map of the Provinces of Brit- 
ish Columbia and Vancouver Island, published at 
London in 1864, gives eloquent testimony of what 
English cartographers thought was the eastern 
boundary of the Russian lisiere a year or two before 
the Emperor Alexander the Second sold Russian 
America to the United States (See Map No. 16). 

By a number of overt acts, too, the British Empire 



W-T 



^"^ 













""tiTT^rv"^ IT'''''"^"^ '"''"'"^''^ '■ " '"'^^"'^^^ ^^ ^"^ "°^^^ °^ Commons to be printed 
72rLr '''■" '""l^' ''^7- '^"'^ ^"^^'^^ Territory, which is Darker than 
THE Canadian in this Reproduction, is Colored Yellow on the Original Map. 

MAP No. 14. 




Imperial Russian Map, i86i. 

MAP No. 15. 




Arrowsmith's Map of the Provinces of British Columbia and Vancouver Island, 1S64. 

MAP No. 16. 



THE DRYAD. 



39 



recognized the right of Russia to a continuous lisiere 
on the continental shore above fifty-four degrees forty 
minutes. One of these acts, for example, was the 
case of the British brig Dryad. 

In June 1834, notwithstanding that by Article six 
of the treaty of 1825 ^^ the Muscovite and the British 
Governments had agreed that British traders should 
have the right forever to navigate freely all rivers 
crossing the Russian lisiere, the Russians turned 
back, near the entrance of the Stikine River, the 
British brig Dryad while on its way to establish a 
trading post in the interior on the Stikine River 
above the limit of Russian territory. Sailing from 
Vancouver, the Dryad, after passing through Clar- 
ence Strait, reached near the north end of Wrangell 
Island, the Russian post, called Fort Saint Dionis- 
sievsky, at the mouth of the Stikine River. When 
the Dryad arrived off the Russian fort, the com- 
mander of the English expedition, Mr. Ogden, who 



i« "Article VI. 

" II est entendu que les sujets de 
Sa Majesty Britannique, de quel- 
que c6t^ qu'ils arrivent, soit de 
I'oc^an, soit de I'int^rieur du con- 
tinent, jouiront ^ perp6tuit6 du 
droit de naviguer librement, et 
sans entrave quelconque, sur tons 
les fleuves et rivieres qui, dans 
leurs cours vers la Mer Pacifique, 
traverseront la ligne de demarca- 
tion sur la lisiere de la c6te indi- 
qu^e dans I'Article III. de la pr^s- 
ente Convention." 



"Article VI. 

"It is understood that the sub- 
jects of His Britannic Majesty, from 
whatever quarter they may arrive, 
whether from the ocean, or from 
the interior of the continent, shall 
forever enjoy the right of navigat- 
ing reely, and without any hin- 
drance whatever, all the rivers and 
streams which, in their course to- 
wards the Pacific Ocean, may cross 
the line of demarkation upon the 
line of coast described in article 
three of the present convention." 



40 



THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



had to use row boats to send on his expedition to 
its intended destination up the river, asked the 
Russian commander, Lieutenant Larembo, for per- 
mission to proceed. But this the Muscovite officer 
refused, basing his reply on the eleventh article of 
the treaty of 1825.^^ Mr. Ogden then proceeded 
to Novo-Arkhangelsk, where he discussed the mat- 
ter with Baron Wrangell. But the latter refused 
his consent to the proposed settlement. Thereupon 
the Dryad returned, and Mr. Ogden reported to 
his Company what had happened. The Hudson's 
Bay Company lodged, for the losses it had suffered, 
a complaint with the British Government against the 
Russian-American Company, and claimed twenty-one 
thousand pounds sterling or about one hundred and 
thirty-five thousand roubles damages. 

During several years the Muscovite and the British 
Governments exchanged many communications on 
the subject. Finally Lord Palmerston pressed upon 



19 



" Article XI. 



" Dans tous les cas de plaintes 
relatives a I'infraction des Articles 
de la pr&ente Convention, les au- 
torit^s civiles et militaires des deux 
Hautes Parties Contractantes, sans 
se permettre au pr^alable ni voie 
de fait, ni mesure de force, seront 
tenues de faire un rapport exact 
de I'affaire et de ses circonstances 
^ leurs Cours respectives, lesquel- 
les s'engagent a la regler ^ I'ami- 
able, et d'apr^s les principes d'une 
parfaite justice." 



"Article XI. 

" In every case of complaint on 
account of an infraction of the 
articles of the present convention, 
the civil and military authorities of 
the high contracting Parties, with- 
out previously acting or taking 
any forcible measure, shall make 
an exact and circumstantial report 
of the matter to their respective 
courts, who engage to settle the 
same, in a friendly manner, and 
according to the principles of 
justice." 



THE DRYAD. 



41 



the attention of the Russian Government that in 1834 
the term of ten years granted in Article seven of 
the treaty of 1825^° to EngHsh subjects and ships 
freely to navigate and trade along the estuaries 
of the Russian lisiere had not expired when the 
officers of the Russian American Company turned 
back the Dryad in 1834. Lord Palmerston also in- 
sisted that, as by the terms of Article six of the 
treaty of 1825, the English were guaranteed the 
free navigation of all the rivers [Jleuves) which, 
taking their rise in British territory, crossed the Rus- 
sian domains, the Russian colonial authorities had 
transgressed their powers in causing the Dryad ex- 
pedition to turn back. The Russian Government 
was thus hard pressed upon this question, especially 
by the latter argument of Lord Palmerston. Finally, 
with the full consent of Count Nesselrode and Lord 
Palmerston, Baron Wrangell, on behalf of the Rus- 
sian-American Company, and Sir George Simpson, 



20 "Article VII. 

" II est aussi entendu que, pen- 
dant I'espace de dix ans, ^ dater 
de la signature de cette Conven- 
tion, les vaisseaux des deux Puis- 
sances, ou ceux appartenant ^ 
leurs sujets respectifs, pourront 
rdciproquement frequenter, sans 
entravequelconque, toutes les mers 
int^rieures, les golfes, havres, et 
criques sur la cote mentionn^e 
dans I'Article III, afin d'y faire la 
p^che et le commerce avec les in- 
digenes." 



"Article VII. 

"It is also understood, that, for 
the space of ten years from the 
signature of the present conven- 
tion, the vessels of the two Powers, 
or those belonging to their respec- 
tive subjects, shall mutually be at 
liberty to frequent, without any 
hindrance whatever, all the inland 
seas, the gulfs, havens, and creeks 
on the coast mentioned in article, 
three for the purposes of fishing 
and of trading with the natives." 



42 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

acting for the Hudson's Bay Company, met in Ham- 
burg in the early part of 1839 for the purpose of 
amicably arranging the incident. After a few days' 
negotiations, these eminent representatives of their 
respective companies made an agreement with a view 
to settle not only all past differences, but also to 
eliminate all chances of future difficulties. For this 
purpose, they agreed on February 6th, 1839, that for 
a term of ten years beginning the 1st of June, 1840, 
the Russian American Company should lease to the 
Hudson's Bay Company all of the lisiere, including 
Fort Saint Dyonissievsky extending from Cape Spen- 
cer at Cross Bay and the Mount of Good Hope down to 
fifty-four forty. The Hudson's Bay Company was to 
relinquish all claims for damages against the Russian 
Company, and was to pay as rent to the latter two 
thousand Columbian sea-otter skins. This agree- 
ment was renewed in 1849 for ten years and in 1859 
for two or three years more, and again in 1862 for 
three years, and finally was extended to 1867.-^ 

" Tikhmenief 's Historical Review of the Development of the 
Russian American Company and of its operations up to the pres- 
eyit tim£. Saint Petersburg, 1861. (In Russian.) Volume I., 
page 264 et seq. 

Parliamentary Papers, i8^j. 

Accounts a — Rep. XV. 

Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes 
of evidence, Appendix and Index. Ordered, by the House of 
Commons, to be printed 31 July and 11 August, 1857. 



LEASE OF THE LISIERE. 43 

The first article of the lease of the lisiere by the 
Russian American Company to the Hudson's Bay 
Company was in these terms : 

" Article I. It is agreed that the Russian Ameri- 
can Company, having the sanction of the Russian 
Government to that effect, shall cede or lease to the 
Hudson's Bay Company for a term of ten years, com- 
mencing from the first of June, 1840, for commercial 



Second Session, 1857. 
Veneris, 8" die maii, 1857. 

Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed " to consider 
the state of those British Possessions in North America which 
are under the Administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
or over which they possess a License to Trade," (page II.), 
pages 59, 91. 

Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume II. ; Appendix to the Case of 
the United States, Volume I., 1892, page 10. 

Memorandum relative to the treaties of 1824 and 1825. 

Memorandum of Baron Wrangell. 

Memorandum of the Russian American Company concerning 
the Dryad incident. 

Report of the Board of the Russian American Company con- 
cerning the case of the Dryad, November 14, 1835. 

Letter of Count Nesselrode to Count Kankrin, December 12th, 

1835. 
Letter of Sir George Simpson to Baron Wrangell. 

Letter of Count Nesselrode to Count Kankrin, December 9th, 
1838. 

Report of the Board of the Russian-American Company, De- 
cember 20th, 1838. 

Text of Agreement between the Russian American Company 
and the Hudson's Bay Company, signed at Hamburg, February 
6th, 1839. 

Letter of Baron Wrangell to Sir George Simpson, 1839. 



44 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

purposes, the coast (exclusive of the islands) and the 
interior country belonging to His Majesty the Em- 
peror of Russia, situated between Cape Spencer, 
forming: the northwest headland of the entrance of 
Cross Sound and latitude 54° 40' or thereabouts, say 
the whole mainland coast and interior country be- 
longing to Russia, together with the free navigation 
and trade of the waters of that coast and interior 
counti-y situated to the southward and eastward of a 
supposed line to be drawn from the said Cape Spen- 
cer to Mount Fairweather, with the sole and entire 
trade or commerce thereof, and that the Russian 
American Company shall abandon all and every 
station and trading establishment they now occupy 
on that coast, and in the interior country already 
described, and shall not form any station or trading 
establishment during the said term of ten years, nor 
send their officers, servants, vessels, or craft of any 
description for the purposes of trade into any of the 
bays, inlets, estuaries, rivers, or lakes in that line of 
coast and in that interior country. It shall neither 
have any trading relations with the Indians living on 
that coast or inland, nor shall receive as traffic, or in 
any other manner furs, skins, or any other products 
of the aforementioned coast and continent. And in 
good faith and in a literal sense we cede and give 
up to the Hudson's Bay Company all trading and 
barter on the aforesaid strips of land and will pro- 
tect the Hudson's Bay Company during ten years by 



LEASE OF THE LISIERE. 45 

every possible means, in case any other Russian 
subject or foreigner might prevent or injure the 
Company in its trade, inasmuch as if the coast 
and continent were not ceded, but were occupied 
by the Russian-American Company itself. And that 
the Russian-American Company will allow the Hud- 
son's Bay Company to take and keep possession of 
the Russian redoubts on Cape Highfield, near the 
estuary of Stikine, and also to occupy other points 
of the aforesaid coast and continent, by establish- 
ment of other trading stations, according to their 
own wish. And in case this treaty should not be 
renewed after the expiration of a term of ten years, 
it is agreed, that the Hudson's Bay Company deliv- 
ers to the Russian-American Company the afore- 
mentioned post on Cape Highfield, as well as all 
other posts, which the Company will in this lapse of 
time establish in the limits of the aforementioned 
Russian dominion. In return for these concessions 
and this protection and in consideration of the com- 
mercial advantages the Hudson's Bay Company may 
have therefrom, it is agreed that the Company will 
pay yearly or deliver to the Russian-American Com- 
pany, in form of a rental, two thousand otters — 
(not counting those with torn and damaged skins) 
— taken on the east side of the Stone ridge, dur- 
ing ten years ; the first rental payment of the 
2000 skins of otters is to begin on June ist or 
before 1841, and is to be delivered to the agents 



46 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

of the Russian-American Company on the North- 
east coast." 

By article ninth of this agreement, the Hudson's 
Bay Company rehnquished all its claim for dam- 
ages against the Russian-American Company in 
these terms : 

" The Hudson's Bay Company shall relinquish 
their claim now pending on the Russian Govern- 
ment, the Russian American Company, or whoever 
else it may concern, for injury and damage said to 
be sustained by the Hudson's Bay Company arising 
from the obstruction presented by the Russian 
authorities on the North-West coast of America to 
an expedition belonging to the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany at the entrance of the river Stakine on the 
North-West coast of America in the year eighteen 
hundred and thirty-four, outfitted and equipped by 
the Hudson's Bay Company for the purpose of form- 
ing a commercial station in the interior British terri- 
tory on the banks of the said Stakine river." 

It was clearly understood at the time that Sir 
George Simpson and Baron Wrangell made the 
agreement whereby the American Company leased 
the lisiere to the English Company, that owing to 
this strip or lisiere, the territories of the Hudson's 
Bay Company were shut off from access to tidewater. 
This is proved absolutely by the testimony that Sir 
George Simpson gave himself in 1857 — he was for 
thirty-seven years Governor of the Hudson's Bay Com- 



SIR GEORGE SIMPSON S TESTIMONY. 47 

pany — before a " Select Committee "^^ of the House 
of Commons of the British Parhament which was ap- 
pointed " to consider the state of those British Pos- 
sessions in North America which are under the Ad- 
ministration of the Hudson's Bay Company, or over 
which they possess a License to Trade." The Com- 
mittee consisted of nineteen members in all, among 
whom were Mr. Secretary Labouchere, the chairman, 
Lord John Russell, Lord Stanley, Mr. Edward Ellice, 
a native of Canada and a Director of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Roebuck and Sir 
John Pakington. Part of Sir George Simpson's tes- 
timony was as follows : 

" 1026. Besides your own territory, I think you 
administer a portion of the territory which belongs 
to Russia, under some arrangement with the Russian 
Company? — There is a margin of coast marked 



■■'^ Parliamentary Papers, iS^y. 

Accounts a — Rep. XV. 

Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes 
of evidence. Appendix and Index. Ordered, by the House of 
Commons, to be printed 31 July and 11 August, 1857. 



Second Session, 1857. 

Veneris, 8° die maii, 1857. 

Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed " to consider 
the state of those British Possessions in North America which 
are under the Administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, or 
over which they possess a License to Trade," (page II.). 



4^ THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

yellow in the map from 54° 40' up to Cross Sound, 
which we have rented from the Russian American 
Company for a term of years. 

" 1027. Is that the whole of that strip? — The strip 
goes to Mount Saint Elias. 

" 1028. Where does it begin ? — Near Fort Simp- 
son, in latitude 54°; it runs up to Mount Saint Elias, 
which is further north. 

" 1029. Is it the whole of that strip which is in- 
cluded between the British territory and the sea ? — 
We have only rented the part between Fort Simpson 
and Cross Sound. 

" 1030. W^hat is the date of that arrangement? — 
That arrangement, I think, was entered into about 
1839. 

" 103 1. What are the terms upon which it was 
made ; do you pay a rent for that Land ? — The 
British territory runs along inland from the coast 
about 30 miles ; the Russian territory runs along 
the coast; we have the right of navigation through 
the rivers to hunt the interior country. A misun- 
derstanding existed upon that point in the first in- 
stance ; we were about to establish a post upon one 
of the rivers, which led to very serious difficulties 
between the Russian-American Company and our- 
selves ; we had a long correspondence, and, to guard 
against the recurrence of these difficulties, it was 
agreed that we should lease this margin of coast, 
and pay them a rent ; the rent, in the first instance, 



SIR GEORGE SIMPSON's TESTIMONY. 49 

in otters; I think we gave 2,000 otters a year; it is 
now converted into money ; we give, I think, 1 500^ 
a year." 

It will be observed from the foregoing questions 
and the replies of Sir George Simpson, that the Hud- 
son's Bay Company in 1839 recognized by an official 
act, to wit, a lease of Russian territory, that Russia 
had a lisiere on the continent from Mount Saint 
Elias almost down to Fort Simpson, and that owing 
to this strip of land the British territory was pushed 
back about thirty miles "inland from the coast." In 
addition it will be noted that Sir George Simpson 
in describing the positions and extent of the land 
rented by his Company from the Russian company, 
referred to a map (see map No. 14) that he showed 
the committee, and upon which the lisiere belonging 
to Russia was marked so as to include the sinuos- 
ities of the coast, the Lynn Canal and all the other 
fiords above fifty-four degrees forty minutes, entirely, 
and so cutting off the British territory absolutely from 
all contact with tide water. 

More than that, owing to the community of inter- 
est of both companies in the peaceful develop- 
ment of the fur trade brought about by the lease 
and its renewal. General Politkovsky, a director of 
the Russian American Company, addressed, early 
in 1854 — when it seemed likely that the strained 
relations between Russia and England would re- 
sult in actual war between them — a note on 



50 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

behalf of the Russian American Company to 
Privy Counsellor L. G. Seniavin, of the Russian For- 
eign Office. In this communication, he pointed out 
that in case of war with England, the posts and prop- 
erty of the company in America would be liable to 
capture and destruction ; and that, as the Hudson's 
Bay Company was likewise in an exposed position on 
the northwest American coast, it would be to the 
mutual interest of the two companies to obtain 
the consent of their respective Governments to 
agree to recognize the possessions of both com- 
panies along the northwest American coast as 
neutral territory in case of hostilities. General Po- 
litkovsky requested, therefore, for his company, 
authority to enter into correspondence with the au- 
thorities of the Hudson's Bay Company upon this 
subject. Towards the end of January the Emperor 
Nicholas approved of this proposition. Accordingly, 
the management of the Russian American Company 
communicated with that of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. This latter company thought likewise that it 
was for its best interest that the fur trade should 
go on without the interruption that war would 
cause. And the management of the Hudson's Bay 
Company, therefore, urged upon the attention of the 
British Government the plan of neutrality proposed 
by the Russian American Company. About the mid- 
dle of March, 1854, the British Government gave its 
approval to a territorial neutrality along the north- 



AGREEMENT OF NEUTRALITY, 1 854-56. 5 1 

west American coast, provided the Russian Govern- 
ment reciprocated. But the British Government re- 
served the right to stop all ships on the high seas, 
and to blockade the coast. After some further cor- 
respondence on the subject between the two Com- 
panies, and between them and their respective Gov- 
ernments, the neutralization of the territoral posses- 
sions of both companies along the northwest Amer- 
ican coast was satisfactorily arranged. And this 
agreement of neutrality, sanctioned by both Govern- 
ments, was loyally carried out during the period of 
the Crimean War. "^ 

^* Letter of General Politkovsky of the Russian American Com- 
pany to Privy Counsellor L. G. Seniavin of the Russian Foreign 
Office, January 14, 1854. 

Letter of Privy Counsellor Seniavin to General Politkovsky, 
January 25, 1854. 

Letter of H. U. Addington of the British Foreign Office, March 

22, 1854. 

Letter of Sir A. Colvill, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany, to the management of the Russian American Company, 
March 24, 1854. 

Letter of Privy Counsellor Seniavin to General Politkovsky, 
March 31st, 1854. 

Letter of Mr. Hilferding to the Consul General at London, 

April ist, 1854. 

Letter of John Shepherd, Deputy Governor of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, to the management of the Russian American 
Company. 

Testimony of Sir George Simpson before a Select Committee 
of the House of Commons, 1857. 

Parliamentary Papers, 18^7. 
Accounts a — Rep. XV. 
Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson's Bay Com- 



52 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Thus by another official act the British Govern- 
ment recognized officially that the British territory 
in North America was cut off above fifty-four forty 
on the north west coast from access to tide water. 
Independently of the fact that the lease was made 
in 1839 to begin June ist, 1840, and that it was 
several times renewed, thus extending the agree- 
ment to 1867, when shortly thereafter Russia sold 
Alaska to the United States, this arrangement be- 
tween the two companies is proved by what took 
place in the course of Sir George Simpson's examin- 
ation in 1857 before a Committee of the House of 
Commons. When the question of the lease in 1839 
by the Hudson's Bay Company of the Russian lisiere 
came up a second time during Sir George's examina- 
tion, the following questions and answers were asked 
and given : 

" 1732. Chairman. I think you made an arrange- 
ment with the Russian Company by which you hold 
under a lease a portion of their territory ? — Yes. 

pany together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of 
evidence, Appendix and Index. Ordered, by the House of Com- 
mons, to be printed 31 July and 11 August, 1857. 



Second Session, 1857. 

Veneris, 8''diemaii, 1857. 

Ordered, That a Select Committee be appointed ' ' to consider 
the state of those British Possessions in North America which are 
under the Administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, or over 
which they possess a License to Trade," sections 1 738-1 742. 



SIR GEORGE SIMPSON S TESTIMONY. 53 

** 1733. I believe that arrangement is that you hold 
that strip of country which intervenes between your 
territory and the sea, and that you give them 1 500^ a 
year for it ? — Yes. 

"1734. What were your objects in making that 
arrangement? — To prevent difficulties existing be- 
tween the Russians and ourselves; as a peace offering. 

" 1735. What was the nature of those difficul- 
ties? — We were desirous of passing through their 
territory, which is inland from the coast about 30 
miles. There is a margin of 30 miles of coast be- 
longing to the Russians. We had the right of navi- 
gating the rivers falling into the ocean, and of set- 
tling the interior country. Difficulties arose between 
us in regard to the trade of the country, and to 
remove all those difficulties we agreed to give them 
an annual allowance. I think, in the first instance, 
2000 otter skins, and afterwards 1500/ a year. 
****** 

" 1738. During the late war [the Crimean] which 
existed between Russia and England, I believe that 
some arrangement was made between you and the 
Russians by which you agreed not to molest one 
another ? — Yes, such an arrangement was made. 

"1739. By the two companies? — Yes; and Gov- 
ernment confirmed the arrangement. 

" 1740. You agreed that on neither side should 
there be any molestation or interference with the 
trade of the different parties ? — Yes. 



54 'I'HE ALASKA FRONTIER, 

"1 74 1. And I believe that that was strictly ob- 
served during the whole war? — Yes. 

"1742. Mr. Bell. Which Government confirmed 
the arrangement, the Russian or the English, or 
both ? — Both Governments." 

This additional information shows that the Eng- 
lish Company rented the lisiere from the Russian 
Company, because the lisiere shut off the English 
Company from access to the fiords of the sea that 
advanced into the continent. And further, these 
questions and replies prove that the English Govern- 
ment — by confirming the agreement of the English 
Company with the Russian not to interfere with 
each other while their respective Governments were 
busy waging war in other parts of the world during 
the years 1854, 1855 and 1856 — recognized and 
sanctioned the claim of Russia that she had an 
unbroken lisiere on the mainland extending far 
enough inland so as to envelop within her own do- 
mains the Lynn Canal and all the fiords that pene- 
trate into the continent above the Portland Canal. 

Sir George Simpson exhibited in 1857 before the 
Committee a map, which was subsequently printed 
by order of the House of Commons, (See map 
No. 14.) He referred to the agreement between the 
two companies and showed on this map the area of 
the leased strip, and the inland boundary of the lisiere 
as marked on that map agrees with the boundary 
claimed by the United States. It was in order to gain 



"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT. 55 

access to the sea and to avoid the possibiHty of any 
clash between the agents of the two companies re- 
sulting from the long Alaskan pan handle that cut off 
the Canadians from the sea above fifty-four forty, that 
the Hudson's Bay Company was willing to pay a 
rental : it was, as Sir George Simpson said, paid as 
a " peace offering." Forty-one years later Canada, as 
the successor of the Hudson's Bay Company, pre- 
sented to the United States at the meeting of the 
Anglo-American Joint High Commission at Quebec 
a territorial claim radically at variance with the 
boundary of Alaska as publicly exhibited to the 
world in 1857, by the Hudson's Bay Company 
through its Governor-General. 

But previous to the Crimean War, back to the 
time of the controversy over the northwest boundary 
between the United States and Great Britain, during 
Polk's administration, when the cry of " Fifty-four 
forty or fight" so famous in our history was raised, 
Russia offered us her American possession, provided 
that we should maintain our claims up to fifty-four 
degrees forty minutes north, the most southern point 
of her territory.-* If we had accepted her offer and 

"^^Papers relating to Foreign Affairs, accompanying the annual 
message of the President to the second session of the Fortieth Con- 
gress, 1867, Part I., Washington: Government Printing Office, 
1886, page 390. 

Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, by 
Frederick W. Seward, Volume III., pages 346-347. 

Fur Seal Arbitration: Volume IV., pages 276-277. 



56 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

persisted in our claims, the North American British 
possessions would have been practically shut out 
from access to the Pacific Ocean. But President 
Polk's administration, after the death of Andrew 
Jackson, ^^ backed down in the north to seek an ex- 
tension in warmer lands in the south. England thus 
gained a large outlet on the Pacific coast. 

Time wore on. In 1859 the subject of a transfer 
of Russian America to the United States was re- 
vived. At that time Senator Gwin of California, in 
behalf of the Buchanan administration, had some in- 
terviews with the Russian minister at Washington 

^5 Governor William Allen of Ohio or " Old Bill" Allen as he 
was known in his State, told many years since Colonel Augustus 
C. Buell, the author of a " Life of Paul Jones," the following in- 
cident about the territory west of the Rockies. He said that once 
when Andrew Jackson was President, the British Minister, in an 
interview with Secretary Van Buren, informally referred to the 
question of arranging the northwest boundary west of the Rock- 
ies along the forty-ninth degree ; Van Buren at once reported the 
matter to General Jackson, who replied that he had fought for 
the southern end of the Louisiana Purchase, and that though he 
was then pretty old, yet there was still enough blood in his veins 
to enable him to fight if necessary for the northern end. The 
British Government did not reopen that question until Jackson 
was dead. Colonel Buell, in a letter to the writer, says that 
"Old Bill Allen, then a Senator from Ohio, was the author of 
' Fifty four forty or fight ' ! And the speech in which he uttered 
the phrase so endeared him to Jackson that the old man always 
afterwards, so long as he lived, used to call him ' My son, 
William.' " Concerning Polk's character see Martin Va?i Bu- 
ren, by Edward M. Shepard in the American Statesme^i series, 
New York, 1899, page 412. 



PROPOSED SALE OF RUSSIAN AMERICA, 1 859. 57 

in reference to buying Alaska.^*^ In these conversa- 
tions, " while professing to speak for the President 
unofficially, he [Senator Gwin] represented * that 
Russia was too far off to make the most of these 
possessions ; and that as we are near, we can derive 
more from them.' In reply to an inquiry of the Rus- 
sian Minister, Mr. Gwin said that ' the United States 
could go as high as 5,000,000 dollars for the pur- 
chase,' on which the former made no comment. Mr. 
Appleton, on another occasion, said to the Minister 
that ' the President thought that the acquisition 
would be very profitable to the States on the Pacific ; 
that he was ready to follow it up, but wished to know 
in advance if Russia was ready to cede ; that if 
she were, he would confer with his Cabinet, and 
influential members of Congress. All this was un- 
official ; but it was promptly communicated to the 
Russian Government, who seem to have taken it into 
careful consideration. Prince Gortschakow, in a dis- 
patch which reached here [Washington] early in the 
summer of i860, said that the 'offer was not what 
might have been expected ; but that it merited ma- 
ture reflection ; that the Minister of Finance was 
about to inquire into the condition of these posses- 
sions.' The Prince added for himself that * he was 
by no means satisfied personally that it would be 
for the interests of Russia politically to alienate these 
possessions ; that the only consideration which could 



26 



Fur Seal Arbitration : Volume IV., 1895, page 277. 



58 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

make the scales incline that way would be the pros- 
pect of great financial advantages ; but that the sum 
of 5,000,000 dollars does not seem in any way to 
represent the real value of those possessions,' and 
he concluded by asking the Minister to tell Mr. 
Appleton and Senator Gwin that the sum offered 
was not considered 'an equitable equivalent.'"^ 

Soon afterwards, the momentous Presidential elec- 
tion of i860 and the beginning of the Civil War of 
1 86 1, brushed aside the subject of the purchase of 
Alaska.^^ During the four years that the war raged, 
Russia was the one great nation that consistently 
from the beginning of that struggle favored the 
Union cause.^ While other great Powers were either 
luke-warm towards or even hostile to the mainte- 
nance of the integrity of the United States, the Mus- 
covite Empire was the open friend of the Union. 
Soon after the commencement of hostilities, Prince 
Gortschakoff, on July loth, 1861,^'' addressed a note 

"^"^ Fur Seal Arbitratio7i : Volume IV., page 278. 

"^^ Fur Seal Arbitratioji : Volume IV., page 278. 

" Seward at Washington, as Senator and Secretary of State, 
by Frederick W. Seward: New York, 1891, Volume III., pages 
40, 49. 

^"Prince Gortschakoff's letter of July loth, 186 1, to M. de 
Stoeckl, Senate Ex. Doc. No. i, jyth Congress, 2nd Session : 
Washington, Government Printing Office, 1861, page 308. Mr. 
Cameron to Mr. Seward, St. Petersburg, June 26th, 1862. 
House Ex. Doc. No. i, jyth Congress, jd Session, pages 447- 
448. Mr. Taylor to Mr. Seward, October 29th, 1862 ; id. page 



RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES, 1861-65. 59 

to M. de Stoeckl, the Russian Minister at Washing- 
ton, in which he instructed him to assure Secretary 
Seward of the friendly feehngs that the Russian 
Government held for that of the United States. In 
various other ways the Russian Government evinced 
its sympathy with that of the United States. So 
much so, in fact, that L. Q. C. Lamar, whom Presi- 
dent Davis intrusted in 1862 with the mission of 
representing the Confederate States at the Court of 
Saint Petersburg, never found it worth while to pro- 
ceed beyond Paris on his mission.^^ While the 

463. Prince Gortschakoff to Mr. Bayard Taylor, Charge d' Af- 
faires, ib. page 464 : " Russia has declared her position and will 
maintain it. There will be proposals for intervention. We be- 
lieve that intervention could do no good at present. Proposals 
will be made to Russia to join in some plan of interference. She 
will refuse any intervention of the kind. Russia will occupy 
the same ground as at the beginning of the struggle. You may 
rely upon it., she will not change. ' ' 

*^The letters that passed between Judah P. Benjamin, the 
Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and Lamar, concerning 
the latter' s mission, are in the Diplomatic Correspondence of the 
Confederacy, in the keeping of Judge Lewis Jordan at the Treas- 
ury Department at Washington. Benjamin in a letter dated at 
Richmond, November 19, 1862, says that because of the note 
that the Cabinet of Saint Petersburg addressed to that of Wash- 
ington, early in the war, to which an extensive publicity was 
given, the Confederate Government did not think it worth while 
to send sooner a representative to Russia. 

Lamar in a letter to Benjamin dated at London, March 20, 
1863, notes the fear of the British Government in September 
1862 to openly interfere in the war. Lamar writes : 

' ' The events of a day may reverse it [the policy of the Gov- 
ernment] entirely, as the following facts will illustrate : 



60 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

English Government permitted — in spite of the pro- 
tests of the American Minister to England, Charles 
Francis Adams — the building of the Alabmna and 
other Confederate cruisers in English ports and 
allowed them to sail, armed with English guns and 

[On Lamar's letter, the following paragraph has been copied 
by the Confederates on to a blank space where Lamar evidently 
intended that a translation of his narrative in cypher should be 
placed,] 
"Name given "^ Cypher in the original My informant states the declara- 
Uonabi'^"^^ tion of a leading member of the Government party (the intimate 
confidential friend of L*^- P. [Palmerston] ) that the Confederacy 
would be recognized in a few days & that he would be appointed 
minister to the C. S. A. All the names given iyi the original. 
This took place in September last [1862]. Only a few days 
after, the same distinguished- personage said to my informant, 
'the game is up. We have had to take another tack.' " 

Evidence from the Confederate side, and, therefore, of much 
importance, showing how the Emperor Alexander the Second, 
threw his influence into the international scales in favor of the 
United States Government during the Civil War, is found in the 
following memorandum of an interview between Justice Lamar 
and Louis Napoleon. It was written September 12th, 1901, by 
Colonel Augusus C. Buell, and addressed to Charles H, Cramp, 
Esq. It proves, as the Diplomatic Correspondence of the Con- 
federacy also shows, that the late Justice Lamar, who was ap- 
pointed in 1862 to represent the Confederate States at the Court 
of Saint Petersburg, never found it worth while to proceed fur- 
ther on his mission than Paris. Colonel Buell says : 

"The late Lucius Q. C. Lamar, shortly after he had been ap- 
pointed an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President 
Cleveland, related to me at his apartments in Washington the 
following : 

"Early in 1862 when the military fortunes of the Confederacy 
were at their zenith and when Jefferson Davis had reason or 
thought he had reason to believe that the independence of the 
Confederacy would be recognized by England and France, he 



ENGLAND AND THE UNITED STATES, 1 86 1 -65. 6 1 

manned with English crews, and to receive aid and 
comfort in Cape Town, Singapore and other EngHsh 
ports, in order to attack the commerce of a friendly 
nation, the Government of the Tsar not only did not 

sent Mr. Lamar, in the capacity of special envoy and plenipoten- 
tiary, to St. Petersburg for the purpose of enlisting the good will 
of the Russian Government, if not its open co-operation with Eng- 
land and France in the expected recognition. 

* :{: * H< * * * 

" After two or three interviews with de Morny, Mr. Lamar was 
informally presented to Louis Napoleon. 

>(; Hs * * * * * 

"Touching the object of Mr. Lamar's mission to Europe the 
Emperor said that it would be worse than fruiriess for him to ap- 
proach the court of Saint Petersburg. 

' ' He said that the Emperor of Russia and all his advisers were 
hopelessly prejudiced in favor of the United States ; that was due, 
he said, to two causes : 

" First, that Russia, still smarting under the sting of her defeat 
by France and England in the Crimean War, would not make 
common cause with them in anything : but would be impelled by 
her resentment and wounded pride to antagonize any policy 
which her late enemies were known or believed to favor ; and she 
had reason to believe that France and England at that time 
viewed the effort of the Confederacy with benevolence. 

"The second and more important reason was that the effort of 
the Confederacy to disrupt the Union and establish independence 
represented to the minds of those in control of Russian affairs 
the doctrine of separatism, than which no doctrine could be more 
odious at Saint Petersburg. 

"He said that the Emperor of Russia was at that moment 
struggling with a movement in his own dominions in the shape 
of a Polish insurrection, the aim of which was cognate to that of 
the Confederacy. 

"This the Emperor Napoleon HL elaborated according to Mr. 
Lamar's narrative, with great force and perspicuity and com- 
pletely convinced him that it would be perfecdy idle to ask the 
Emperor of Russia to favor in the United States a movement 



62 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

recognize the belligerency of the Confederate States, 
but in addition, when the Emperor Louis Napoleon 
and Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell were 
anxious to intervene in the struggle in behalf of the 

based upon a principle cognate to that which he was at that time 
bringing all the resources of his Empire to crush in Poland. 

"On his part, Mr. Lamar represented to the Emperor that 
there would be nothing in common between the Government of 
the United States and that of Russia on the grounds of political 
principle ; on the contrary the doctrines on which the two Gov- 
ernments were based were diametrically diverse to each other in 
every respect. 

"The Emperor Napoleon said that, while that might be true in 
the academic sense or speculatively, it cut no figure in the exist- 
ing situation. 

' ' On the other hand, there was a similarity between the re- 
spective aims and interests which easily produced a sentimental 
friendliness and that the step from such a state of feeling to acts 
was a very short one. At any rate, the Emperor Napoleon said 
it was doubtful whether Mr. Lamar would be cordially received 
in any capacity in Saint Petersburg at that time and it was per- 
fectly certain not only that he would not be received there as 
the accredited envoy of the Southern Confederacy but that the 
right of the Confederacy to ask recognition of its envoy would 
be denied at the outset. 

' ' Such action on the part of the Russian Government at that 
time, the Emperor Napoleon said, would have a more or less 
decisive influence adverse to the interests of the Confederacy at 
other Courts of Europe and might embarrass the efforts of the 
friends of the Confederacy in France and in England. 

' ' On the strength of these representations Mr. Lamar re- 
mained in Paris and proceeded no farther towards the execution 
of his mission. 

" He represented to the Government at Richmond what he 
had learned from de Morny and Louis Napoleon with the result 
that he was soon after recalled to the South and no further 
attempt was made by the Confederate Government to communi- 
cate in any manner with the Imperial Russian Government." 



THE RUSSIAN FLEETS, 1 863. 63 

Confederacy,^^ the Emperor Alexander the Second 
refused to join any combination for intervention in 
the American Civil War, and took good care to 
make it known that in case any Power actively 
sided with the Confederate States, Russia would 
support the Union Government.^^ The most tan- 

^'^ Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, New York, 1879, page 
268. Wordsworth and the Coleridges by Ellis Yarnall, New 
York, 1899, page 256. August Belmont in a letter dated at 
London, July 30, 1861, to William H, Seward wrote that Lord 
Palmerston had told him : ' ' We do not like slavery but we want 
cotton, and we dislike very much your Morrill tariff." 

England and France agreed to act in common. Senate Ex. 
Doc. No. I, syth Congress, 2d Session, pages 106, 225. 

'^Concerning the attitude of Russia towards the United States 
during the Civil War, see : 

Memoir of Thurlow Weed, edited by Thurlow Weed Barnes ; 
Boston, 1884, Volume IL, pages 346-347. Thurlow Weed re- 
lates a conversation between Admiral P'arragut and Admiral 
Lessovsky during the winter of 1863-64 as follows : — 

' ' Admiral Farragut lived at the Astor House, where he was 
frequently visited by the Russian Admiral, between whom, when 
they were young officers serving in the Mediterranean, a warm 
friendship had grown up. Sitting in my room one day after din- 
ner. Admiral Farragut said to his Russian friend, ' Why are you 
spending the winter here in idleness? ' ' I am here,' replied the 
Russian Admiral, * under sealed orders, to be broken only in a 
contingency that has not yet occurred.' He added that other 
Russian war vessels were lying off San Francisco with similar or- 
ders. During this conversation the Russian Admiral admitted 
that he had received orders to break the seals, if during the Re- 
bellion we became involved in a war with foreign nations. Strict 
confidence was then enjoined." 

Jj^ J|5 'l^ ^^ ^p 3K #1C 

"Louis Napoleon had invited Russia, as he did England, to 
unite with him in demanding the breaking of our blockade. The 



64 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

gible proof that the Muscovite Empire gave to the 

Russian Ambassador at London informed his government that 
England was preparing for war with America, on account of the 
seizure of Mason and Slidell. Hence two fleets were immediately- 
sent across the Atlantic under sealed orders, so that if their 
services were not needed, the intentions of the Emperor would 
remain, as they have to this day, secret. It is certain, however, 
that when our government and Union were imperiled by a for- 
midable rebellion, we should have found a powerful idly in 
Russia, had an emergency occurred." 

Mr. Barnes then immediately adds : — 

"The latter revelation is corroborated by a well-known New 
York gendeman, who was in St. Petersburg when the Rebellion 
began, and who, during an unofficial call upon Prince Gort- 
schakoff, was shown by the Chancellor an order written in 
Alexander's own hand, directing his Admiral to report to Presi- 
dent Lincoln for orders, in case England or France sided with 
the Confederates. ' ' 

The Alabama Arbitration by Thomas Willing Balch, Phila- 
delphia, 1900, page 28 et seg., for an account by George Peirce, 
Esq., of an interview in 1872 between Ex-Govenior Curtin, then 
United States Minister at Saint Petersburg, and Prince Gortscha- 
koff. The Russian Chancellor showed Governor Curtin the orders 
to the Russian admirals, and other important correspondence. 

A letter of Secretary Seward to John Bigelow, Consul-General 
at Paris, dated June 25, 1862, published in the New York Sun, 
January 5th, 1902. Mr. Seward said : " Between you and myself 
alone, I have a belief that the European state, whichever one it 
may be, that commits itself to intervention anywhere in North 
America, will sooner or later fetch up in the arms of a native of an 
oriental country not especially distinguished for amiability of 
manners or temper." 

A letter from Wharton Barker, Esq. , about the policy of Russia 
during the Civil War, printed in the New York Su7i, January 
9th, 1902. Mr. Barker, for many years a financial agent of the 
Russian Government in the United States, relates an interview 
to which he was called in August 1879, at the Palace of Pavlovsk, 
by the Emperor Alexander the Second, and says in part ; 



THE RUSSIAN FLEETS, 1 863. 65 

world at large of its readiness to aid the Govern- 



' ' Witli great earnestness and some sadness he [the Emperor] 
said that in the autumn of 1862 France and Great Britain pro- 
posed to Russia in a formal but not in an official way the joint rec- 
ognition by European Nations of the independence of the Confed- 
erate States of America. He said his immediate answer was, ' I 
will not co-operate in such action and I will not acquiesce, but on 
the contrary I shall accept recognition of the independence of the 
Confederate States by France and Great Britain as a casus belli 
for Russia, and that the Governments of France and Great Britain 
may understand this is no idle threat, I will send a Pacific fleet to 
San Francisco, and an Atlantic fleet to New York. Sealed orders 
to both Admirals were given,' After a pause he proceeded say- 
ing, ' my fleets arrived at the American ports, there was no rec- 
ognition of the independence of the Confederate States by Great 
Britain and France, the American rebellion was put down and 
the great American Republic continues. All this I did because 
of love for my own dear Russia rather than for love of the 
American Republic I acted thus because I understood that 
Russia would have a more serious task to perform if the American 
Republic with advanced industrial development was broken up 
and Great Britain left in control of most branches of modern 
industrial development.'" 

Narrative of the Missio7i to Russia, in 1866, of the Ho7i. 
Gustavus Vasa Fox : New York, \%']'i, passim. 

The New York Tribiine, October 2nd, 1863, page 3. 

The Life ofLordfohn Russell, by Spencer Walpole, London, 
1889: second edition, Volume II., pages 344, 349-352. 

Papers relating to Foreign Affairs accompanying the Arinual 
Message of the President to the Second Session of the Thirty- 
eighth Congress : Part III. ; Washington, 1865, page 279. 

lb., Part II., Washington 1864, pages 'j62,-']'j9 passifn. 

Abraham Liiicoln by John G. Nicolay and John Hay : New 
York, 1890, Volume VI., pages 63-66. 

Quelques Pages d' Histoire Contemporaine : Lettres Politiques, 
by Provost- Paradol: Paris, 1864-1866, Volume II., pages 201 
et seq., Volume III., page 166. 






66 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

ment of President Lincoln, if foreign nations inter- 
fered with the American Government in its efforts 
to preserve the integrity of the United States, was 
the assembHng during the autumn of 1863 in the 
harbors of New York and San Francisco of two 
Russian Fleets. That which collected at New York 
was under the command of Admiral Lessovsky and 
that which assembled at San Francisco was under 
the orders of Admiral Popoff. ^* 

" The squadron of Admiral Lessovsky consisted of the flag- 
sliip Alexander Nevski, the Osliaba, the Peresvet, the Variag, 
and the Vitiaz. The Variag arrived in September, and Ad- 
miral Lessovsky with his other ships reached New York during 
October. The authorities of the city gave the Russians a grand 
welcome. They showed the Russian officers over the fortifica- 
tions of the port, gave them a public reception and held a mili- 
tary review in their honor. The significance of these festivities 
were the more marked in that an English fleet, to whom only 
the usual courtesies were extended, was also in the harbor at the 
time. In October, a committee of leading citizens gave the 
Russian Officers a ball at the Astor House. A few of the gentle- 
men on the committee in charge of the ball were George Opdyke, 
Mayor of New York, Charles P. Daly, W. H. Aspinwall, J. W. 
Beekman, Elliott F. Shepard, Hamilton Fish and Royal Phelps. 
(The Daily Alia California, San Francisco, Nov. 18, 1863.) 
Afterwards Admiral Lessovsky took his squadron into Chesa- 
peake Bay and up the Potomac River ; and President Lincoln 
and Secretary Seward gave the Russians a most cordial welcome 
at Washington. 

It is a curious coincidence that, as in 1 863 the then Variag was 
the first of the Russian war vessels to reach an American port, so, 
too, a generation later, a new Variag was the first of the two war 
ships — that the Messrs. Cramp of Philadelphia were then build- 
ing for the Russian navy — that was launched (1900) and put into 
commission (1901). 



PURCHASE OF RUSSIAN AMERICA. 67 

In January 1866, the Legislature of the Territory 
(now the State) of Washington sent a memorial to 
President Johnson in reference to the fishing question 
in Russian American waters. This Memorial, on its 
presentation to the President in February 1866 was 
referred to the Secretary of State, by whom it was 
communicated to M. de Stoeckl, the Russian Min- 
ister, with remarks on the importance of some early 
and comprehensive arrangement between the two 
Powers in order to prevent the growth of difficul- 
ties, especially from the fisheries in that region. 

About this time Mr, Cole, newly elected Senator 
from California, sought to obtain, in behalf of individ- 
uals in his State, a license or franchise from the Rus- 
sian Government to gather furs in a part of Russian 
America. The charter of the Russian-American Com- 

The fleet of Admiral Popoff at San Francisco consisted of the 
Flagship Bogatyre, the Abreck, the Calevale, the Gaidamack, 
and the Rynda. The Gaidamack arrived first on the i6th of 
October, 1863, and the Rynda came last on the 7th of the follow- 
ing month. On the 17th of November, 1863, the civil and mili- 
tary authorities of San Francisco and California gave Admiral 
Popoff and his officers a grand ball. " It was not," to quote the 
Alta Calif orttia, "a mere ball, but also a political demonstra- 
tion." The committee that had the ball in charge consisted of 
the Hon. F. F. Low, Governor-elect of California and chairman ; 
the Hon. Ogden Hoffiiian, United States District Judge ; Ad- 
miral C. H. Bell, in command of the United States Pacific Squad- 
ron ; Brigadier General George Wright, in command of the De- 
partment of the Pacific ; the Hon. Charles James, Collector of the 
Port of San Francisco ; the Hon. H. P. Coon, Mayor of the city ; 
and many representative citizens. 



68 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

pany was about to expire. That Company had already 
sublet all its franchises on the mainland, from fifty- 
four degrees forty minutes up to Cross Sound, to 
the Hudson's Bay Company. This lease would ex- 
pire in June 1867.^ Senator Cole had repeated con- 
ferences with M. de Stoeckl. The latter, however, 
had not authority to act ; and accordingly a com- 
munication was sent to Mr. Clay, the United States 
Minister at St. Petersburg, who brought the subject 
to the notice of the Imperial Ciovernment. 

During the winter of 1866-67, Secretary Seward — 
who even as early as i860 had expressed in public 
the hope that Russian America would become a part 
of the American Union ^*"' — quietly conducted with M. 
de Stoeckl, the Russian Minister at Washington, ne- 
gotiations for the purchase of Russian America.^^ In 
renewing, through M. de Stoeckl, the pourparlers that 
representatives of the two friendly nations had had 
on the subject years before, " Seward found the Gov- 
ernment of the Czar not unwillino- to discuss it. Rus- 
sia would in no case allow her American possessions 
to pass into the hands of any European power. But 
the United States always had been and probably 

^ Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 279. 

^^ Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, 
i86i-i8y2, by Frederick W. Seward, New York, 1S91, Volume 
III., page 346. 

^^ Sercard at Jias/iington as Senator and Secretary of State, 
iS6i-iSj2, by Frederick W. Seward, New York, 1891, Vokmie 
III., page 346. 



PURCHASE OF RUSSIAN AMERICA. 69 

always would be a friend. Russian America was a 
remote province of the Empire, not easily defensible, 
and not likely to be soon developed. Under Amer- 
ican control it would develop more rapidly, and 
be more easily defended. To Russia, instead of a 
source of danger, it might become a safeguard. To 
the United States it would give a foothold for com- 
mercial and naval operations, accessible from the 
Pacific States. Seward and Gortschakoff were not 
long in arriving at an agreement over a subject 
which, instead of embarrassing with conllicting in- 
terests, presented some mutual advantages." ^^ 

In October, 1866, M. de Stoeckl, who enjoyed the 
confidence of our Government, returned home on a 
leave of absence. While he was at Saint Petersburg, 
the subject of leasing to an American Company the 
rights that Russia had formerly rented to the Hud- 
son's Bay Company, was under consideration. The 
Russian Government, however, was opposed to any 
such minor arrangement. It wished to hand over to 
the United States for a fair consideration the whole of 
Russian America. The possessions of distant Ameri- 
can territory, lying across the seas, was an element of 
weakness to Russia, and the Empire was anxious to 
part with it to the United States, a friendly power. 
Besides, Russia, in withdrawing her flag from the 

*® Seward at Waslmigton as Senator and Secretary of State, 
1S6T-1872, by Frederick W. Seward, New York, 1891, Vol- 
ume III., page 347. 



yo THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

New World to the Old, and in preferring the United 
States to England as a purchaser of Russian Amer- 
ica, evinced once more, as upon former occasions, her 
friendship for the United States. "As M. de Stoeckl 
was leaving in February [1867] to return to his post, 
the Archduke Constantine, the brother and the chief 
adviser of the Emperor, handed him a map with the 
lines in our Treaty marked upon it and told him he 
might treat for this cession." ^^ 

The two Governments agreed upon seven millions 
two hundred thousand dollars ($7,200,000.) in gold as 
the purchase price. The final settlement was ar- 
ranged at the State Department between Seward 
and de Stoeckl on the night of March 29-30, 1867.'"' 
" The treaty was then and there engrossed, signed, 
sealed and prepared for transmission to the Sen- 
ate." ^^ 

The morninof after Seward and de Stoeckl had 
come to an agreement about the purchase, Charles 
Sumner, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations, arose in the Senate, and, although an 
opponent of President Johnson, moved after the 
clerk had read the treaty, that favorable action should 
be taken upon it. 

^' Sumner's Speech 1867 : Fur Seal Arbitration^ Volume IV., 
page 280. 

" Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, by 
Frederick W. Seward, New York, 1891, Volume III., page 348. 

*' Information received from Frederick W. Seward, Esq. 



SUMNER S SPEECH. 7 1 

Sumner immediately began to prepare to speak 
in the Senate in favor of the ratification of Sew- 
ard's policy of purchasing what was then known as 
Russian America. The Massachusetts Senator, in 
the great speech that he delivered in the United 
States Senate in the spring of 1867, referred at the 
outset of his remarks to the boundaries of the ter- 
ritory which the administration proposed to buy as 
clear and definite. He began by saying r''^ 

"Mr. President: You have just listened to the 
reading of the treaty by which Russia cedes to 
the United States all her possessions on the North 
American continent in consideration of $7,200,000., 
to be paid by the United States. On the one side is 
the cession of a vast country with its jurisdiction and 
its resources of all kinds; on the other side is the 
purchase-money. Such is the transaction on its face. 

" In endeavoring to estimate its character, I am 
glad to begin with what is clear and beyond question. 
I refer to the boundaries fixed by the treaty. Com- 
mencing at the parallel of 54° 40' north latitude, so 
famous in our history, the line ascends Portland 
Channel to the mountains, which it follows on their 
summits to the point of intersection with the 141'' 
west longitude, which line it ascends to the Frozen 
Ocean, or, if you please, to the north pole. This is 
the eastern boundary, separating this region from 



" Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 269. 



72 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

the British possessions, and it is borrowed from the 
treaty between Russia and Great Britain in 1825 
establishing the relations between these two Powers 
on this continent. It will be seen that this boundary 
is old ; the rest is new." 

Thus Sumner, who had devoted much time and 
study in preparing for this speech, spoke in no un- 
certain terms about the bounds of the territoiy which 
it was proposed to add to the Union. 

The services that the Russian government had 
rendered to that of the Union during the Civil War 
by sending two fleets across the seas to American 
ports in order to neutralize the desire of other gov- 
ernments to join in an attempt to aid in the disrup- 
tion of the United States, undoubtedly was a potent 
element in rallying support in America for the pur- 
chase of Alaska.''^ 



" The following letter, written in 1901, from the son of Secre- 
tary Seward helps to clear up some of the Russian-American 
relations. The Honorable Frederick W. Seward was himself 
Assistant Secretary of State from 1861 to 1869 and took part in 
the negotiations for the purchase of Alaska. 

" montrose-on-the-hudson, 
" Dec id, 1901. 
" My dear Sir : 

' ' Your letter of the 6th has been received. You are quite 
right, both in your statements and in your conjectures. 

' ' There was no connection between the visit of the Russian 
Fleet to the United States in 1863, and the purchase of Russian 
America in 1867, — except that each was the manifestation of 
Russia's friendship and good- will, at diiferent periods. 



STATE DEPARTMENT MAP, 1 867. 73 

The Senate confirmed the Treaty. Then without 
waiting- for Congress to pass the necessary appro- 
priation to enable the United States government to 
pay the purchase money, the Muscovite government, 
during the autumn of 1867, formally and officially 
transferred Russian America to the United States ; 
and the new territory became from that time known 
by the name chosen by Secretary William H. Sew- 
ard — Alaska. 

In buying Alaska, the United States understood 
that they obtained from Russia a continuous, unin- 
terrupted strip of land on the continent from Mount 
Saint Elias to the Portland Canal, whereby Great 
Britain was shut off from access to the Pacific Ocean 

' ' There was no request, no arrangement, no equivalent in ref- 
erence to the Russian Fleet. Prince Gortschakoff was a very 
sagacious diplomatist. He sent over the Fleet and said it was here 
' for no unfriendly purpose.' Of course we knew that we might 
count on its aid, if needed, but fortunately we did not need it. The 
exchange of public hospitalities showed how it was regarded on 
both sides. 

" I have endeavored in my ' Life and Letters of W. H. S.' to 
narrate the events and incidents of 1863 and 1867, just as I saw 
and heard or took part in them. But all histories are apt to get 
embroidered with a fringe of romantic fiction, as time goes on. I 
do not know who invented that about Alaska. Probably it 'just 
grew.' 

' ' Your information from Russian sources about the Emperor 

Alexander's views, entirely accords with my own understanding 

of the matter. 

* ' Very sincerely yours, 

"FREDERICK W. SEWARD. 
"Mr. T. W. Balch." 



■\ 



74 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

above fifty-four degrees forty minutes. Secretary 
Seward and Senator Sumner so interpreted the pur- 
chase. The State Department, on a map it issued 
at the time, gave a visual effect of what the United 
States thought they had bought from Russia. (See 
Map No. 17.) This map, which Sumner used, was 
published, together with his speech, in pamphlet 
form. Upon this map, the eastern boundary of 
the pan-handle or lisiere of Russian America or 
Alaska — which latter name, meaning in the local 
tongue " Great Land," Secretary Seward gave to 
the purchased territory after it had come into the 
possession of the United States — was drawn so as 
to include within the bounds of Alaska all the sin- 
uosities that cut into the mainland between fifty- 
four degrees forty minutes north and Mount Saint 
Elias. The frontier line as thus laid down fol- 
lowed the eastern boundary of Alaska as Krusen- 
stern (1827) and Piadischeff (1829) and Bouchette 
(1831) and Arrowsmith (1834) had drawn it on tlieir 
maps ; and to the frontier as thus marked the English 
Government made no protest. General Banks, chair- 
man of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the 
House so understood it.'*^ The British Government 
made no protest to the territorial claims asserted in 

** Speech of Hon. Natha?iiel P. Banks of Massachusetts, de- 
livered in the House of Rep7-esentatives, fune jo, 1868. F. & J. 
Rives and Geo. A. Bailey, Reporters and Printers of the Debates 
of Congress, page 6. 





^ A 






SS^pA 



^ 






j^. 



t> V 



Map published by the State Department of the United States, 1867. 

MAP No. 17. 



76 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Sumner's speech itself or to their exempHfication on 
the map of the State Department. 

Besides, by subsequent acts and maps, the British 
Government confirmed the United States Govern- 
ment in its behef that it had bought from Russia, 
along with the rest of Alaska, a tongue of territory 
that, extending from Mount Saint Elias to the Port- 
land Channel, passed around all the sinuosities of 
the coast and sufficiently far inland to altogether 
exclude Canadian territory from touching tide water 
on the Pacific coast at any point above fifty-four 
degrees forty minutes north latitude. 

A notable instance of what English cartographers 
thought was the area of Alaska was given in 1867, 
at about the time of the sale by Russia to the United 
States of Russian America. In that year Black's 
V General Atlas of the World was published at Edin- 
burgh. In the introduction of this work, the fol- 
lowing description of Russian America is given : 

" Russian America comprehends the N. W. portion 
of the continent, with the adjacent islands, extend- 
ing from Behring Strait E. to the meridian of Mount 
St. Elias (about 141° W.), and from that mountain 
southward along the Maritime chain of hills till it 
touches the coast about 54° 40'." 

Then, on three maps of this adas, "The World," 
No. 2, " The World on Mercator's Projection," No. 3, 
and " North America," No. 39, the Russian territory 
from Mount Saint Elias down to the end of the 



1/ 



IMPORTANT MAPS. "]"] 

Portland Canal at fifty-four degrees forty minutes is 
marked so as to include within the Muscovite pos- 
sessions all the fiords and estuaries along the coast 
and thus to exclude and cut off the British territory 
entirely from all access to tide water above fifty-four 
degrees forty minutes. In addition there is given 
a small map marked at the top, " Supplementary 
sketch map, Black's General Atlas, for plate 41," and 
at the bottom, " United States after Cession of Rus- 
sian-America, April 1867, Coloured Blue." On this 
sketch map the territory purchased by the United 
States is marked, " Formerly Russian America," and, 
like the rest of the United States, it is colored blue. 
And the boundary of the new territory of Alaska 
is given as upon the other three maps of this Atlas, 
Nos. 2, 3 and 39, already cited, according to Brue's 
map of 1825, Krusenstern's map of 1827, and the 
Canadian and the English maps already referred 
to, and in accordance with the territorial claim that 
Russia and the United States have always maintained 
and acted upon. 

Many other maps can be mentioned in addition to 
those above quoted against Britain's recent claim. 
For examples, Petermann's map in the Mittheilungen 
of April, 1869; Hermann Berghaus's " Chart of the 
World on Mercator's Projection," 1871^^ (see Map 
No. 18); Alexander Keith Johnston's map of " North 
America " in his Handy Royal Atlas of Modern ^ 

*^ Published by Justus Perthes, Gotha. 



sy 



\y 



MTT?^?^ 




Hermann Berghaus's Chart of the World, 1S71. 

MAP No. 18. 



IMPORTANT MAPS. 79 

Geography published at Edinburgh and London, in 
1881 ; E. Andriveau-Goujon's map of" TAmerique 
du Nord," published at Paris in 1887, and finally the 
wall map (1897) o^ ^^ " United States" by Edward 
Stanford,^^ an important map maker of London to- 
day, give to Alaska the limits always claimed since 
1825 by Russia and the United States."*^ 

**77/(? United States : London ; published by Edward Stanford, 
26 and 27 Cockspur St., Charing Cross, S. W. , 15th July, 1897. 

*'The following maps support the United States claim to an 
unbroken lisiere : 

America : A new General Atlas, Edinburgh, printed by John 
Stark, 1830. 

Nord-Ameyica, verlag von L. Pabst, Darmstadt, ante 1846. 

America, Verlag des Geographischen Instituts, Weimar, 1853. 

Nord-Amerika, politische Ubersicht von E. von Sydow, Justus \/ 
Perthes, Gotha, 1856. 

Nord- America, Berlin bei Dietrich Reimer, i860. y^ 

AUgemeine Welt Karte in Mercator's Projection von Hermann / 
Berghaus, 1868. 

Map of the Yukon or Kwich-Pak River at the end of Travel 
a7id Adventure in the Territory of Alaska by Frederick Whym- 
per: London, John Murray, 1868, 

Map in Alaska, Reisen und erleb7iisse im hohen Norden von 
Frederick Whymper, 1869 (German translation). 

Sibirien 7md Russich Amerika von Spruner-Menke : Hist. \y 
Handatlas, No. 72: Justus Perthes, Gotha, 1871. 

Nord-Amerika von K. Bamberg, Weimar ; verlag der 
Deutschen Reichsbuchhandlung C. Chun, Berlin, 1881. 

General Map of North America by W. & A. K. Johnston, y^ 
Geographers to the Queen, Edinburgh and London, 18S7. 

Amerigue du Nord par F[r^re] A[leiis] M[arie] G[ochet] 
des E [coles] Chr^tiennes : Paris and Orleans, 1891. 

Amerigue du Nord : Institut National de G6ographie, Brux- 
elles, 1 89 1. 



8o THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Some maps — for example, " The World " by James 
Gardner, published in 1825 and dedicated "To His 
Most Gracious Majesty George the IVth " ; " Nord 
America, Entworfen und gezeichnet von C. F. Wei- 
land," 1826 ; and a " Carte Physique et Politique par 
A. H. Brue," 1827 — bring the Russian boundary on 
the mainland from Mount Saint Elias down only to 
a point about half way opposite Prince of Wales 
Island at about fifty-six degrees and then along the 
fiords so as to include all of Prince of Wales Island 
in the Russian Territory, instead of carrying the 
frontier to the top of the Portland Canal and then 
down to the sea at about fifty-four degrees and forty 
minutes. But for all the territory above the point 
on the continent about half way opposite Prince of 
Wales Island up to the one hundred and forty-first 
degree west from Greenwich, these maps give the 
divisional line between the Muscovite and the Brit- 
ish territories far enough inland and around the 
sinuosities of the coast so as to cut off the British 
territory from all contact with tide water. Besides, 
Weiland, in a map of 1843 corrected his error in his 
map of 1826, in stopping a little short of the Port- 

Amirigzie Septentrionale : Institut National de Geographic, 

Bruxelles, 1892. 
^ The British Colonies and Possessions : Edward Stanford, 

London, May 24th, 1897. 
v/ Puissance du Canada: Atlas de Geographic Moderne par 

F. Schrader, directeur des travaux cartographiques de la librairie 

Hachette et Cie, Paris, 1899. 




Brum's Map of 1833. 
MAP No. 19. 



82 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

land Canal in marking the Russo-Canadian bound- 
ary ; and in Brue's maps of 1833 (see Map No. 19) 
and 1839 (see Map No. 20) the divisional line is 
given as it was marked on his map of 1825. Gard- 
ner's map is overwhelmed by the multitude of Eng- 
lish and Canadian maps — governmental and private — 
that followed Krusenstern's delineation of the line 
of demarcation. And additional proof of how far 
south the negotiators of the treaty of 1825 in- 
tended that the Russian lisiere should extend when 
they used the phrase, " la dite ligne remontera au 
nord le long de la passe dite Pordand Channel, 
jusqu'au point de la terre ferme ou elle atteint le 
56"" degre de latitute nord," is clearly shown by Van- 
couver's chart upon which he inscribed the name 
- Portland Canal." ^« 

Time passed. In 1871, British Columbia became 
a part of the Dominion of Canada. And from 1872 
to 1884 Canada, by a number of acts and maps, 
recognized the validity of the American claims to 
an unbroken strip or lisiere upon the continental 
shore. 

In 1872, Sir Edward Thornton, acting on his in- 
structions from the British Foreign Office, which was 
serving as the intermediary for the Government of 
Canada, proposed to Secretary Hamilton Pish, the ad- 

V *^ A Chart showing part of the Coast of N. W. America with 

the tracks of His Majesty' s Sloop Discovery and Armed Tender 
Chatham commanded by George Vancouver : London, 1 798. 




Brum's Map of 1839: "Nouvelle Carte de l'Am6rique 
Septentrionale. ' ' 



MAP No. 20. 



84 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

visability of having a survey made of the territory 
through which the boundary ran, so that the frontier 
could be located exactly, and Mr. Fish thought well 
of the idea and said that he would urire Congress 
to provide funds for such a survey. 

On December 2d, 1872, President Grant, in his 
annual message to Congress, said, after referring to 
the then recent settlement of the San Juan boundary 
dispute : ^^ 

" Experience of the difficulties attending the de- 
termination of our admitted line of boundary, after 
the occupation of the territory and its settlement by 
those owing allegiance to the respective Govern- 
ments, points to the importance of establishing, by 
natural objects or other monuments, the actual line 
between the territory acquired by purchase from 
Russia and the adjoining possessions of Her Britan- 
nic Majesty. The region is now so sparsely occupied 
that no conflicting interests of individuals or of juris- 
diction are likely to interfere to the delay or embar- 
rassment of the actual location of the line. If de- 
ferred until population shall enter and occupy the 
territory some trivial contest of neighbors may again 
array the two Governments in antagonism. I there- 
fore recommend the appointment of a commission, 
to act jointly with one that may be appointed on the 
part of Great Britain, to determine the line between 



*^ Senate Ex. Doc. No. 14J, 49th Congress, ist Session, 
page 3. 



SURVEYOR-GENERAL DENNIs's OPINION. 85 

our territory of Alaska and the coterminous posses- 
sions of Great Britain." 

It was estimated that a survey of the Alaskan 
boundary line would cost the United States some- 
thing like a million and a half of dollars ; and that 
it would probably require nine years in the field and 
another year to map the result. The suo^gestion of 
President Grant was not acted upon by Congress. 

At that time no mention was made of Canada's 
present claim that she is entitled to the upper part 
of many or all of the fiords or sinuosities that cut 
into the mainland above fifty-four degrees forty 
minutes. 

On the contrary, the Surveyor-General of Canada, 
J. S. Dennis, in a written communication in 1874 to 
the Minister of the Interior of the Dominion, gave his 
opinion that it would be sufficient at that time to 
determine exactly the points at which the frontier 
crosses the rivers. He wrote at length : 

"The undersigned is of opinion that it is unneces- 
sary at present (and it may be for all time) to incur 
the expense of determining and marking any portion 
of the boundary under consideration other than at 
certain of the points mentioned in the extract alluded 
to in the dispatch of Sir Edward Thornton to the Earl 
of Granville, dated the 15th of February, 1873, that is 
to say : — 

"I. The head of the Portland Canal or the intersec- 
tion of the same by the 56th parallel of north latitude. 



86 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

"2. The crossing of the following rivers on the Pa- 
cific coast by the said boundary, that is to say : The 
Rivers ' Skoot,' * Stakeen,' * Taku/ 'Isilcat' and 
'Chilkaht' 

" 3. The points where the one hundred and forty- 
first meridian west of Greenwich crosses the rivers 
Yukon and Porcupine. 

"There is no object to be gained of which the un- 
dersigned is aware in fixing the intersection of the 
boundary along the coast with the 141st meridian as- 
sumed to be on Mount Elias, that expenditure, there- 
fore, may be saved." He added further, "the United 
States surveys of the coast could be advantageously 
used to locate the coast line in deciding the mouths 
of the rivers in question, as points from whence the 
necessary triangulation surveys should commence in 
order to determine the ten marine leagues back." In 
addition a United States Coast Survey map, " Certi- 
fied Dom" Lands Office, January i6th, 1878," by Sur- 
veyor-General Dennis, was published in connection 
with this letter, with the boundary line starting from 
the top of the " Portland Canal " and crossing the 
Skoot, Stikine and Taku Rivers ten leagues back 
from the coast.^° (See Map No. 21.) 

The fact that Mr. Dennis said that the boundary 
crossed the Skoot River and also that he approved 

*" Sessional Papers, Volume XI., Fifth Session of the Third 
Parliament of the Dominion of Canada, session 1878 (No. 125) 
page 28 and the map vis-a-vis. 







Tlie BurlanJ ncNbarals Liili C Monircal. 



Certified 



Df/m^ Zaiids Office 
Jan. /6^^ /S7S. 




s. G\ n. L. 



Map published in Canadian Sessional Papers, 1878. 
MAP No. 21. 



88 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

of a map which showed the boundary crossing the 
Skoot River, are especially noteworthy evidence 
against the Canadian demands. For the Skoot River 
does not come to tidewater at all, but flows into 
the Stikine some distance from the sea. 

Again, in the case of Peter Martin in 1876, the 
British and the Canadian Governments recognized 
through the settlement of that incident by the British 
Foreign Office that on the Stikine River Canada did 
not touch tide water. 

It was in 1876, while taking a prisoner named 
Peter Martin, who was condemned in the Cassiar dis- 
trict of British Columbia for some act committed in 
Canadian territory, from the place where he was con- 
victed to the place where he was to be imprisoned, 
that Canadian constables crossed with the prisoner 
the United States territory lying along the Stikine 
River. They encamped with Martin at a point some 
thirteen miles up the river from its mouth. There 
Martin attempted unsuccessfully to escape, and made 
an assault on an officer. Upon his arrival at Vic- 
toria, the capital of British Columbia, he was tried 
and convicted for his attempted escape and attack 
upon the constable ; and the court sentenced him. 
The Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, protested 
against this infringement of the territorial sovereignty 
of the United States in the Territory of Alaska. In a 
letter to Sir Edward Thornton, the English Minister 
at Washington, he said: "I have the honor, there- 



PETER martin's CASE. 89 

fore, to ask again your attention to the subject and 
to remark that if, as appears admittedly to be the 
fact, the colonial officers in transporting Martin from 
the place at which he was convicted to his place of 
imprisonment, via the Stickine River, did conduct 
him within and through what is the unquestioned 
territory of the United States, a violation of the 
sovereignty of the United States has been committed, 
and the recapture and removal of the prisoner from 
the jurisdiction of the United States to British soil 
is an illegal act, violent and forcible act, which 
cannot justify the subsequent proceedings whereby 
he has been, is or may be restricted of his liberty." 

The transit of the constables with their prisoner, 
Martin, through American territory was not due to 
a mistake on their part as to the extent of Canadian 
territory, for J. B. Lovell, a Canadian Justice of the 
Peace in the Cassiar district of British Columbia 
wrote to Captain Jocelyn in command at Fort Wran- 
gel, saying : " The absence of any jail here (Glen- 
ora, Cassiar), or secure place of imprisonment neces- 
sitates sending him through as soon as possible, and 
I hope you will excuse the liberty we take in forward- 
ing him through United States territory without spe- 
cial permission." After an investigation into the 
facts of the case, the Dominion Government acknowl- 
edged the justness of Secretary Fish's protest by 
" setting Peter Martin at liberty without further 
delay ;" and thus recognized that the Canadian con- 



90 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

stables who had Martin in their charge when they 
encamped on the Stikine thirteen miles up from the 
mouth of the river, were on United States soil, and 
so that Canada's jurisdiction in that region did not 
extend to tide water.*"^ 

Another recognition by the British Empire that the 
lisiere restricted Canadian sovereignty from contact 
with the sea, occurred shortly after the case of Peter 
Martin. 

Owing to a clash between the United States and 
the Canadian customs officials as to the extent of 
their respective jurisdiction on the Stikine River, 
their two Governments agreed in 1878 upon a pro- 
visional boundary line across that river. The Ca- 
nadian Government had sent in March 1877 one of 
its engineer officers, Joseph Hunter, " to execute," 
in the language of Sir Edward Thornton to Secretary 
Evarts, "a survey of a portion of the Stikine River, 
for the purpose of defining the boundary line where 
it crosses that river between the Dominion of Canada 
and the Territory of Alaska." This Canadian engi- 
neer, Hunter, after measuring from Rothsay Point at 
the mouth of the Stikine River, a distance ten marine 
leagues inland, determined — in the light of Articles 
III. and IV. of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of February 
16/28, 1825, which two Articles he was instructed ex- 

^^ Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the U^iited States: 
Washington ; Government Printing Office, 1877, pages 266, 267, 
271. 



HUNTER S SURVEY. 9 1 

pressly " by direction of the minister of the interior " 
to consider in locating the boundary — that the fron- 
tier crossed the Stikine at a point about twenty-five 
miles up the river and almost twenty miles in a 
straight line from the coast. Without considering 
whether, owing to the break in the water shed caused 
by the passage of the Stikine through the mountains, 
the United States territory extends inland to the full 
extent of thirty miles, Hunter decided that the line 
should cross the river at a point twenty miles back 
from the coast, but still far enough back from the 
mouth of the river to shut off Canadian territory 
from contact in that district with the sea. He came 
to this decision, because he found that at that point 
a range of mountains, parallel to the coast, crossed 
the Stikine River, and, as he stated expressly in 
his report to his chief, he acted upon the theory 
that this mountain range followed the shore line 
within the meaning of the treaty of 1825 as he 
understood it. In his report to his Government he 
said : '* Having identified Rothsay Point on the 
coast at the delta of the Stikine River, a monu- 
ment was erected thereon, from which the survey 
of the river was commenced, and from which was 
estimated the ten marine leagues referred to in the 
convention." The Canadian Government sent a 
copy of this report together with a map explaining 
it through the British Foreign Office tro Sir Edward 
Thornton at Washington, who c-ommun<:ated it 



92 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

to Secretary William M. Evarts, with the purpose 
of obtaining his acceptance of this boundary. Mr. 
Evarts agreed to accept it as a provisional line, but 
with the reservation that it should not in any way 
prejudice the rights of the two Governments, when- 
ever a joint survey was made to determine the fron- 
tier. By this voluntary proposal of a provisional 
boundary across the Stikine River, the British and 
the Canadian Governments showed that in 1877 and 
1878 they considered that Canadian territory above 
the point of fifty-four degrees forty minutes was re- 
stricted by the meaning of Articles III. and IV. of 
the Anglo-Muscovite Treaty of 1825 from access to 
the sea.^^ More recent explorations in the valley 
of the Stikine as well as the fact that Surveyor- 
General Dennis of Canada recognized in 1874 that 
the boundary line should cross the Skoot River, 
shows that the point fixed by the Canadian, Hunter, 
in 1878 was too near the coast line. The frontier 
should be drawn still further inland. 

In 1885, President Cleveland, in his first annual 
message to Congress, recommended with prudent 
foresight, a preliminary survey of the Alaskan-British 
Columbian boundary line, with a view of locating ex- 
actly where that frontier should run before the devel- 

*" Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United 
States: Washingtou; Government Printing Office, 1878, page 

339- 



CLEVELAND S MESSAGE. 93 

opment of immediately local interests complicated 
the settlement of the boundary. He said : ^^ 

" The frontier line between Alaska and British 
Columbia, as defined by the treaty of cession with 
Russia, follows the demarcation assigned in a prior 
treaty between Great Britain and Russia. Modern 
exploration discloses that this ancient boundary is 
impracticable as a geographical fact. In the unsettled 
condition of that region the question has lacked im- 
portance, but the discovery of mineral wealth in the 
territory the line is supposed to traverse admonishes 
that the time has come when an active knowledge of 
a boundary is needful to avert jurisdictional compli- 
cations. I recommend, therefore, that provision be 
made for a preliminary reconnaissance by officers of 
the United States, to the end of acquiring more pre- 
cise information on the subject. I have invited Her 
Majesty's Government to consider with us the adop- 
tion of a more convenient line, to be established by 
meridian observations or by known geographical fea- 
tures without the necessity of an expensive survey 
of the whole." 

In accordance with the President's instructions, Mr. 
Bayard, the Secretary of State, wrote at length on 
November 20, 1885, to Mr. Phelps, United States 
Minister at London, concerning the advantages of 

*' A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 
1 789-1897, by James D. Richardson, a Representative from the 
State of Tennessee : Washington, 1898, Volume VIII., page 332. 



94 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

settling exactly where the boundary between Alaska 
and British Columbia ran.^^ Mr, Bayard instructed 
in his communication Mr. Phelps to ask the Marquis 
of Salisbury for " an early expression of his views 
touching the expediency of appointing an interna- 
tional commission " to fix at the earliest possible op- 
portunity upon a " conventional boundary line " in 
substantial accord with the provisions of the Anglo- 
Muscovite treaty of 1825. 

On January 12, 1886, Mr. Phelps in an interview 
with the Marquis of Salisbury, discussed thoroughly 
the boundary line between Alaska and British Co- 
lumbia ; and he proposed to the English Secretary of 
Foreign Affairs that the two nations should appoint 
a joint commission for the purpose of ascertaining 
how the line should run.^^ Lord Salisbury received 
the proposition with favor, but he desired before pro- 
ceeding further with the discussion of the subject, to 
communicate first by mail with the Government of 
the Dominion. 

The Canadian Government, while unwilling that 
the British Empire should agree with the United 
States for a joint commission to investigate where the 
boundary line ran, looked with favor upon President 
Cleveland's suggestion of a preliminary survey of the 

*' Senate Ex. Doc. No. 14J, 4gt/i Congress, ist Session, page 
2 et seq. 

°^ Senate Ex. Doc. No. 14^, 4gth Congress, ist Session, page 
13, etseq. 



BAYARD AND SALISBURY. 95 

country in question. And the British Government in 
April 1886, announced to the United States its will- 
ingness to agree to such a preliminary reconnais- 
sance.^'' In this correspondence both Mr. Bayard and 
Mr. Phelps, realizing the great difficulty of locating 
exactly the boundary along the eastern side of the 
Alaskan lisiere,^' showed their willinsfness to consent 
to some mutual agreement with Great Britain of 
"give and take" in running that line. But they made 
it perfectly clear in their communications upon the 
subject — Mr. Bayard in his letters to Mr. Phelps, and 
the latter in his to the English Ministers — that they 
understood that the United States had in any case an 
unbroken and continuous lisiere on the mainland.^ 
And in the whole correspondence no hint, even much 
less any formal statement, was made on the part of 
the British authorities that the English Empire had 
any right to any territory touching tide water above 
fifty-four degrees forty minutes. 

Apparently as a result of this interchange of views 
between the two Governments, the subject was taken 

^•^ Lord Rosebery's letter of April 15, 1886, to Mr. Phelps: 
Senate Ex. Doc. No. 14J, 4.gth Congress, ist Sessioti, page 19. 

" " The coast proves, upon survey, to be so extremely irregular 
and indented, with such and so many projections and inlets that it 
is not possible, except at immense expense of time and money to 
run a line that shall be parallel with it." Mr. Phelps to the Mar- 
quis of Salisbury, January 19, 1886, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 14J, 
page 14. 

^^ Senate Ex. Doc. No. 14.3, 4gth Congress, ist Session. 



96 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

up during the session of the Fisheries Conference of 
1 887- 1 888 that was held at the City of Washington 
and it was suggested " that an informal consultation 
between some person in this country (the United 
States) possessing knowledge of the questions in dis- 
pute and a Canadian similarly equipped might tend 
to facilitate the discovery of a basis of agreement 
between the United States and Great Britain upon 
which a practical boundary line could be established." 
Accordingly a number of informal conferences were 
held early in 1888 at Washington, D. C, between 
Professor William H. Dall of the United States 
Geological Survey and Dr. George M. Dawson, for 
many years head of the Dominion Geological Survey. 
These gentlemen, who were acquainted with the gen- 
eral features of the country through which the line of 
demarcation must pass, held, it appeared when they 
talked the matter over, widely different views as to 
how the frontier should be drawn. While Professor 
Dall thought that there was not a shadow of doubt 
that the frontier should pass around the sinuosities of 
the mainland above fifty-four degrees forty minutes 
and thus at every point shut off Canada from tide 
water, Dr. Dawson maintained that the line of de- 
marcation should cut across most if not all of those 
same sinuosities. Mr. Dall based his opinion on the 
wording of the Treaty of 1825 and the historical de- 
velopment of the Russian-American settlements. Dr. 
Dawson founded his contention upon a mistaken 



DALL AND DAWSON. 97 

reading of the same Treaty. He argued that where 
the mountains failed to provide a natural watershed 
within the ten leagues limit from the shoreline, the 
coast from which the ten leagues inland should be 
measured was not the shoreline of all the sinuosities 
that cut into the mainland, but the outer edge of the 
territorial waters of the lisiere ; and that within those 
territorial waters were included all parts of the sinu- 
osities above the point where they were only two 
leagues or less wide from shore to shore. In ad- 
vancing this argument in support of his contention, 
he failed thoroughly to comprehend the language of 
the Treaty. He said in his Report to Sir Charles 
Tupper, a copy of which he handed to Mr. Dall, 
that the Treaty of 1825 stipulates: 

" Que partout ou la crete des montagnes qui 
s'etendent dans une direction parallele a la cote .... 
se trouverait a la distance de dix lieues marines de 
I'ocean .... la limite .... sera formee par une ligne 
parallele a la cote, et qui ne pourra jamais en etre 
eloignee que de dix lieues marines." 

Then he went on to say : 

" The word ' ocean ' is wholly inapplicable to 
inlets ; consequently the line, whether marked by 
mountains or only by a survey line, has to be 
drawn without reference to inlets. 

^ ^ ^ ilf ^ ^ 

" None of the inlets between Portland Channel and 
the Meridian of 141° west longitude are six miles in 



98 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

width, excepting, perhaps a short part of Lynn Canal ; 
consequently, with that possible exception, the width 
of territory — on the coast assigned under the Con- 
vention to Russia — may not be measured from any 
point within the mouths of the inlets. All the waters 
within the mouths of the inlets are as much territorial 
waters, according to an universally admitted interna- 
tional law, as those of a fresh-water lake or stream 
would be under analogous circumstances." 

Unfortunately for the strength of the above argu- 
ment, Dr. Dawson failed to take into account the 
actual wording of the Treaty and misquoted it in 
the citations above given. For the last sentence 
of the Fourth Article of the Anglo-Muscovite Treaty 
of 1825 that Dr. Dawson quotes, reads not as he 
gives it, but as follows : 

" Sera formee par une ligne parallelle aux sinuosi- 
tes de la cote et qui ne pourra jamais en etre eloignee 
que de dix lieues marines." 

When the sentence, " parallele aux sinuosites de 
la cote " is written and read as it is actually in the 
Treaty, and not as Dr. Dawson wrote it to Sir 
Charles Tupper, "parallele a la cote," it is perfectly 
apparent that in the Treaty itself it is expressly 
provided that the frontier line shall never pass across 
any of the sinuosities, but always around them at 
some distance inland. ^^ 

*® Probably the most important aid which has been given to the 
crystallization of a public opinion in England favorable to the Ca- 



ARGUMENT OF CANADA. 99 

The weakness of the Canadian claims becomes 
clearly evident by a comparison and examination of 
the Canadian demands from their inception until the 
Quebec Conference. It then becomes apparent that 



nadian myth, is the article from the pen of Mr. Thomas Hodgins, 
King's Counsellor, Master in Ordinary of the Supreme Court 
of Ontario, that appeared in the Contemporary Review for 
August, 1902, The Alaska- Canada Boimdary Dispute, 

Mr. Hodgins in his presentation of the question entirely passes 
over many vital facts at variance with the Canadian argument and 
others he states in such a meagre way that they have a semblance 
of supporting the Canadian view of the question instead of the 
United States side of it as they really do. He never mentions 
any Canadian or English maps, evidently because they are 
evidence against the Canadian contentions. He gives one or two 
extracts from the instructions of the British Government to their 
representatives to show that in the negotiations that resulted in 
the treaty of 1825, the English plenipotentiary forced the Russian 
diplomats to recede from the contention the Muscovites had made 
originally. As a matter of fact, a careful examination of the 
whole correspondence leading up to that treaty clearly establishes 
the fact that England was forced to recede from one proposition 
after another until she finally agreed to the demand of Russia 
that the Muscovite Empire should have on the continent an un- 
broken lisiere including all the sinuosities in their whole extent 
above fifty-four degrees forty minutes. 

Mr. Hodgins gives three short quotations from Count Nessel- 
rode : '' Etroite lisiere sur la cdte^' ''d'une simple lisiere du con- 
tinent;' ''d'unmHiocre espace de terre ferme." He does not 
say in what book, nor at what pages they may be found. They 
are all three taken from Count Nesselrode's letter to Count 
Lieven, the Russian Ambassador to England, dated April 17th, 
1824. {Fiir Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 399.) From 
these short extracts Mr. Hodgins attempts to argue that the 
Russians were only fencing to retain so narrow a strip on 
the mainland that it would give them merely the land around 



lOO THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

the Canadians have advanced two sepamte and dis- 
tinct claims with a later modification of one of them, 
to the territory that both the Russian and the United 
States Governments have always openly contended 

the mouths of the sinuosities that advance into the continent : 
in other words, that they would be satisfied with a broken 
lisiere. But when those quotations are examined with their 
complementary contexts in Count Nesselrode's note to Count 
Lieven, it is seen that the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs 
instructed the Russian Ambassador at London to make it 
known to the English Government that Russia would never be 
content with less than a strip or lisiere on the continental shore 
above fifty-four forty of sufficient width to include all the sinuosities 
in their entire extent. Count Nesselrode distinctly insisted that 
the eastern frontier of the lisiere should be drawn along the top of 
the mountains that follow the sinuosities of the coast. 

For example, the context with which the first of those short 
citations is connected is as follows. Speaking of the proposition 
that Sir Charles Bagot had made relative to a frontier, Count 
Nesselrode said, " that upon the continent and towards the east, 
this frontier could run along the mountains that follow the sinu- 
osities (sinuosit6s) of the coast up to Mount Saint Elias, and that 
from that point up to the Arctic Ocean we would fix the limits of 
the respective possessions according to the line of the 140 degree 
of longitude west from Greenwich. 

" In order not to cut Prince of Wales Island, which according 
to this arrangement should belong to Russia, we proposed to carry 
the southern frontier of our domains to the 54° 40' of latitude 
and to make it reach the coast of the continent at the Portland 
Canal whose mouth opening on the ocean is at the height of 
Prince of Wales Island and whose origin is in the lands between 
the 55° and 56° of latitude. 

' ' This proposition only assured us a narrow strip upon the 
coast itself, and it left to the English establishments all the space 
necessary to multiply and expand." 

The original French text of the above quotation is as follows : 
"qu' en consequence la ligne du 55^ degr6 de latitude septentri- 



ARGUMENT OF CANADA. lOI 

was part and parcel of Russian America or Alaska. 
The first of the two claims pressed by Canada to 
Alaskan territory was that the part of the third 
article of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825, which 

onale, constitueroit au midi la frontiere des Etats de Sa Majesty 
Imp^riale, que sur le continent et vers Test, cette frontiere pour- 
roit courir le long des montagnes qui suivent les sinuosit6s de la 
cote jusqu'au Mont Elie, et que de ce point jusqu'a la Mer 
Glaciale nous fixerions les bornes des possessions respectives 
d'apres la ligne du 140''' degr6 de longitude ouest meridien de 
Greenwich. 

"Afin de ne pas couper I'lle du Prince de Galles, qui selon cet 
arrangement devoit rester a la Russie, nous proposions de porter 
la frontiere m^ridonale de nos domaines au 54° 40' de latitude et 
de la faire aboutir sur le Continent au Portland Canal, dont 1' em- 
bouchure dans 1' Oc6an est a la hauteur de 1' He du Prince de Galles 
et I'origine dans les terres entre le 55° et 56° de latitude. 

" Cette proposition ne nous assuroit qu' une ^/rt^zV^ lisiere sur 
la cote memc, et elle laissoit aux Etablissemens Anglois tout 
I'espace necessaire pour se multiplier et s'^tendre." {^Fur Seal 
Arbitration, Volume IV., page 399.) 

The object of the Russians in having such a strip was to pre- 
vent the English from establishing trading posts on the mainland 
opposite the Russian islands which could compete with the 
Russian establishments in the quest for furs. Had the Russians 
allowed the English to have the upper part of the sinuosities 
above fifty four forty, the Hudson's Bay Company could have 
established posts on the upper reaches of the estuaries to com- 
pete with the Russian settlements on the islands. 

In support of the Canadian argument that the outward edge 
of the territorial waters should be used in computing the ten 
leagues inland, Mr. Hodgins intercalates in the English version 
of several of the articles which he quotes of the treaty of 
1825 a few extracts from the French original, but he does not 
place after the word xvindings of the English text, the French 
word sinuosites of the French version. The French copy of the 
treaty is the official text, and the British Imperial Government 



I02 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

reads, "La elite ligne remontera au nord le long de 
la passe dite Pordand Channel jusqu'au point de 
la terre ferme ou elle atteint le 56^ degre de latitude 
Nord," did not mean that body of water which 

has recognized it as such ; and the use of the word sinuosites 
gives a somewhat different meaning from the word windings. 
The meaning of sinuosite is more accurately rendered in English 
by the word indentation. The word sinuosite alone is proof 
enough to overthrow the Canadian argument in support of meas- 
uring the ten leagues inland from the outer edge of the territorial 
waters instead of from the shores of the sinuosities of the coast. 
As the phrase " parallele aux sinuosites de la cote" goes to the 
very heart of the boundary question, it is certainly simpler for a 
Canadian to omit that sentence altogether and so avoid all dis- 
cussion of it. 

In reference to the case of Peter Martin in 1876, Mr. Hodgins 
fails to show that, in the final settlement of that incident between 
the United States Department of State and the British Foreign 
Office, the British and the Canadian Governments recognized 
that on the Stikine River, Canada did not touch tide water. 

Mr, Hodgins cites Chief Justice Marshall — who never heard of 
the Alaska boundary question — and other jurists of repute to 
show that the United States in this dispute are acting in a 
wrong and immoral way. For instance, he quotes two extracts 
from ex-President Cleveland. {The Century, New Series, Vol- 
ume XL., 1 901, pages 283 and 290.) An examination of these 
passages shows that in them Mr. Cleveland did not condemn the 
international morality of the United States either generally or 
in this particular instance, but on the contrary sharply attacked 
the policy of Lord Salisbury towards Venezuela. 

Mr. Hodgins states that ' ' the free navigation of the waters in 
the strip of coast was proffered " and he quotes from the Russian 
Plenipotentiaries to prove his point. When, however, the note 
" Observations of Russian Plenipotentiaries on Sir C. Bagot's 
Amended Proposal" {Fur Seal Arbitration, WoXnm^ IV.j pages 
428-429) is read in full, it is evident in the first place that the 
Russians meant rivers, not waters, since the word they used 



PORTLAND CHANNEL. 103 

Vancouver had named Portland Channel or Canal, 
but several other stretches of water a long dis- 
tance away known severally as Duke of Clarence 
Strait and Behm's Canal or Channel and Burrough's 

is fleuvesy and in the second place the note shows also that 
the Russians wished an unbroken, continuous strip on the 
mainland. 

Mr. Hodgins also cites a passage from Secretary Blaine {Fur 
Seal Arbitration^ Volume II., page 273) in support of the claim 
that Canada now makes to the upper part of the sinuosities such 
as the Lynn Canal. But the quotation from Mr. Blaine does not 
support the Canadian contentions, for Mr. Blaine in no way gives 
up our right to the whole of the Lynn Canal and the envelop- 
ing strip of land on the continent. What Mr. Blaine does say 
is that which is specially provided for in the treaty of 1825, that 
all rivers which take their rise in Canadian territory and then 
flow through the Russian or American lisiere, shall be open to 
the Canadians for navigation. For example, the Stikine River 
takes its rise in Canadian territory, and passing through the 
American strip of land, empties into the sea near Fort Wrangell. 
In so far as the Stikine is navigable, the Canadians have the 
right of through navigation, just as the Rhine and the Danube 
are open to the international navigation of the several adjoining 
powers. 

In addition Mr. Hodgins makes the following remarkable 
statement : ' ' The United States have acquired their present 
great territorial domain partly by Revolution and partly by the 
voluntary gift of Canadian territory from Great Britain ; by pur- 
chase from France, Spain and Russia ; and by conquest from 
Mexico and Spain. Under what guileless title should be placed 
their unsanctioned appropriation of the Canadian Naboth's vine- 
yard, on the British side of the boundary line ? Perhaps as an 
American sequel to the Fashoda incident." In a note Mr. 
Hodgins says that the ' ' gift was that part of old French Canada 
now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, 
and Minnesota, comprising about 300,000 square miles of Cana- 
dian territory ceded by France to Great Britain in 1763." 



I04 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Bay. And that consequently the frontier line should 
not be drawn eastward from the southern end of 
Prince of Wales Island through Dixon's Entrance 
and then up the estuary that opens at that point into 
the ocean as the Russian and the United States and 
the great majority of English and Canadian and other 
cartographers have marked it, but northward up part 
of Duke of Clarence Straits and then north-eastward 
along Behm's Canal to Burrough's Bay and then 
overland in a generally northward and north-westerly 
direction. Besides, it is a fact that that body of water 
which the United States have and do claim is " Port- 
land Channel " or " Canal " has been so marked on 
several official Canadian and English maps, as for in- 
stance a map of the " Northwestern part of the Do- 
minion of Canada," which was published by the Sur- 
veyor-General at Ottawa in 1898. In addition, upon 
a number of these maps, the generic names "chan- 
nel " and " canal " are used interchangeably to 
denote bodies of water of a similar formation or 
nature. This is notably the case on the British 
"Admiralty Chart No. 787," published in 1877, 
and reissued at intervals with corrections up to 
1898 (see Map No. 22) and again in 1901 (see 
Map No. i), which gives "Portland Canal" and 
"Lynn Chan."^'* 



GO 



Admiralty Chart No. 787 was first issued in 1877 and re- 
issued with corrections in June 1885, D^c. 1886, March 1889, 
July 1889, Dec. 1889, June 1890, March 1891, Sept 1891, Nov 



■ < >iii|iiiii]iiitiiii|iiinH .1,1 . >i|""iiF" i| '""! i " ' V i ' i ' -T-^' 





"brok 



J86S 
Iff.OS 



)63 
.os.Uk.a 



*--. 









JDrson EntraDce '-K^f rp ^if^ 




British Admiralty Chart, Published June 2IST, 1877, under the Superintendence of 
Captain F. J. Evans, R. N., Hydrographer, and Corrected to April, 1898. 



MAP No. 22, 



I06 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Unfortunately, too, for the adroit Canadian argu- 
ment that the "Portland Channel " and the "Portland 
Canal " cannot possibly mean the same estuary, it is 
conclusively proved by comparing the English texts 
and the authorized French translation of Vancouver's 
Voyages that the name of " Portland Channel " and 
the "Portland Canal" mean one and the same iden- 
tical body of water. 

In the English originals of Vancouver's Voyages 
the text reads : 

" In the forenoon we reached that arm of the sea, 
whose examination had occupied our time from the 
27th of the preceding to the 2d. of this month. The 
distance from its entrance to its source is about 70 
miles ; which, in honor of the noble family of Ben- 
tinck, I named Portland's Canal." "^^ 

Again, in the edition of 1801, the text runs thus: 

" In the forenoon we reached that arm of the sea, 
whose examination had occupied our time from the 
27th of the preceding to the 2d of this month. The 
distance from its entrance to its source is about 
70 miles ; which, in honor of the noble family of 
Bentinck, I named Portland's Channel." ^- 

1891, Oct. 1892, June 1893, March 1894, Oct. 1894. Dec. 1894, 
April 1895, January 1898, April 189S, August 1901. 

^^A Voyage of Discovery, by Captain George Vancouver: 
London, 1798, Volume II., page 371. 

*^ A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Oceati, arid 
Round the World * * * under the command of Captain 
George Vancouver: London 1801, Volume IV., page 191. 
(Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.) 



PORTLAND channel: VANCOUVER S TEXTS. ID/ 

The French translation published at Paris at about 
the same time reads thus : 

" L'apres-midi, nous atteignimes le bras de mer, 
dont la reconnaissance nous avait occupes, depuis le 
27 juillet, jusqu'au 2 de ce mois. La distance de 
son entree a son extremite interieure est d'environ 
70 milles. Je I'ai nomme Canal-de-Portland, en 
I'honneur de la famille de Bentinck."*^ 

Also in the drafts and counter drafts that passed 
between Sir Charles Bagot and Count Nesselrode in 
their efforts to agree upon a boundar)'line, the names 
♦' Portland Canal " and " Portland Channel " are used 
intercha7igeably . " 

To-day, partly because on many maps the name 
Portland Canal is given and partly because the "wish 
is father to the thought" some Canadians would have 
the world believe that Count Nesselrode, Monsieur 
de Poletica and Mr. Stratford Canning when they in- 
serted the name " Portland Channel " in the treat)' of 
1825 did not mean that body of water that Vancouver 
had named Portland Channel, but that they intended 
to designate thereby some other stretch of water 



65 



^^ Voyage de Decouvertes, a V Ocean Pacifique du Nord et Autour 
die Monde ^ * * par le capitaine George \'ancouver : traduit 
de r anglais par P. F. Henry' : A Paris, de \ Imprimerie de Didot 
Jeune, an X., Volume III., page 370. (Academy of Natural 
Sciences, Philadelphia.) 

^ Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., pages 427-430. 

^ On this point see a letter by Mr. Arthur Johnston in the New 
York Nation, January 23d, 1902, and a reply to it by Professor 



I08 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

And yet the negotiators of the treaty of 1825 knew 
of Vancouver's charts, and so of his voyages of 
discovery. This first claim by Canada to United 
States territory is thus thoroughly well met by the 
work of the discoverer and the name given by him 
to the Portland Channel, even had not the British 
Imperial Government in its formal demand at the 
Quebec Conference to the United States, for what 
is clearly the latter's domain, acknowledged that 
the United States contention as to what is the 
Portland Channel is right. 

In addition, the debates of the Dominion Parlia- 
ment show that Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Premier of 
Canada, himself acknowledged the unsoundness of 
the British Columbian claim as to what body of water 
Count Nesselrode and Sir Stratford Canning meant 
by inserting in the Anglo-Muscovite treaty of 1825 
the name "Portland Channel." Colonel Prior, mem- 
ber in the Dominion Parliament for Victoria, British 
Columbia, asked in the spring of 1901 the Govern- 
ment a number of questions and obtained replies 
as follows : — 

The Hon. E. G. Prior (member for Victoria, 

B. C.),«6sai^^. 

" Before the Orders of the Day are called, I would 

William H. Dall of the Smithsonian Institution, in the Nation, 
January 30th. 

®* Debates of the Hotise of Commons, Sessions of igor : Vol. 
LV., page 4407 — The Alaskan Boundary. 



PORTLAND CHANNEL : PRIOR AND LAURIER. IO9 

ask the right hon. leader of the House to give his 
attention to some correspondence I have received 
concerning the Alaskan boundary dispute. * * * 
Last year I asked in the House : 

" 'Has the large map of the Dominion, which was 
latterly exposed to view in the vestibule of this build- 
ing, been sent to the Paris exhibition as an official 
map of Canada exhibited by the Government ? 

" ' Is it true that the boundary between Canada and 
Alaska, commonly known as the 'Alaska Boundary,' 
is marked on that map according to the United States 
contention, and that the boundary according to the 
Canadian, or British Columbia, contention, is not 

shown at all ? ' 

" To this question, the Hon, the Minister of Agri- 
culture replied : 

'"The map in question was sent to Paris as one of 
the exhibits of the Department of Public Work, but 
not as an official map. It is true that the boundary 
between Canada and Alaska, commonly known as 
the 'Alaska Boundary' is marked on that map in two 
ways, marking the American contention and the 
Canadian contentions as to the boundary, and each 
of those markings is distinctly stated to be what it 
represents, so that I do not think there can be any 
possible difficulty or doubt as to what is meant.' " 

Colonel Prior continued :—" Last year I wrote to 
Mr. Begg, who has taken a great deal of interest in 
this question, and we both wrote to Mr. Brymner, 



no THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

who was then in Paris, asking him to go to the ex- 
position and examine the map. I have not got Mr. 
Brymner's answer to myself, as I unfortunately left 
it at home, but I have a letter here from Mr. Begg 
on the same subject, dated 17th April 1901 : — 

" ' I have been looking over the letter sent to me by 
Mr. Brymner of Paris, who visited the exhibition at 
your request, and mine, to see if it was as repre- 
sented — one provisional boundary for British Colum- 
bia and another for United States. In his letter to 
me dated July 17th, 1900, he says : — " I had your note 
re the frontier question, also a letter from Col. Prior, 
House of Commons, Ottawa, asking me to go and 
see if it was really as you stated, that the boundary 
marked ran up Portland Canal, and not up Clarence 
Sound, and if two boundaries were given and marked 
* provisional.' There is but one boundary marked, 
and that is the one claimed by the United States, and 
there is absolutely no mention made of its being pro- 
visional. There is no distinct colour between Amer- 
ican and Canadian territory, so it is very difficult to 
trace the line, the area being so great (covered by the 
map) that nearly all the names have been left out, so 
that neither Portland Canal nor Clarence Sound are 
mentioned, Wrangel being the only name given in 
that neighbourhood. My object in alluding to this 
matter now is that this map may be sent to the Glas- 
gow exhibition, and it would be well to know if the 
erroneous boundary is marked running up Portland 



PORTLAND CHANNEL : PRIOR AND LAURIER. I II 

Canal, and if the British Columbian provisional 
boundary along Clarence Straits, as shown on Brit- 
ish Columbian maps, is entirely left out.' 

" ' Mr. Brymner's statement is undoubtedly correct, 
and it agrees with what I supposed were the facts of 
the case.' " 

Colonel Prior then said : 

" Of course, I have not seen the map myself, but if 
Mr. Brymner's statement, both to Mr. Begg and 
myself be correct, namely, that the only boundary 
marked on the map is that which the Americans con- 
tend for, the Government is greatly to blame for 
having allowed such a map to be put on exhibit. 
No doubt if on this map only the American conten- 
tion is shown, that will be brought in as an argument 
in favour of the United States whenever the matter 
goes to arbitration. 

" I would ask my right hon. friend whether he will 
find out if it be true that the American boundary is 
the only one indicated on this map, or whether there 
are two distinct boundaries marked on it and both 
stated plainly to be provisional?" 

The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Sir Wilfred 
Laurier, replied to Colonel Prior: — *T shall call the 
attention of my colleague the Minister of Agriculture 
to the representations of my hon. friend. I may say, 
however, that in view of the advice we have received 
from our law offices, it is very hard to maintain that 
the boundary runs up Clarence channel. The treaty 



112 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

says in so many words the Portland canal, but there 
is a difference in opinion between the Americans and 
ourselves as to where that channel is. We claim that 
it is west of Pearse Island. They claim that it is Ob- 
servatory Inlet. As to endeavouring to have the line 
pass along Clarence channel, which is a pretention 
Mr. Begg has often submitted to me, I do not think 
any one, who will take a careful view of the matter, 
can be convinced of the correctness of that preten- 
tion. The point on which we and the Americans do 
not agree, is as to what is Portland channel. They 
want to make it run up Observatory Inlet and then 
to the west, making out that Observatory Inlet is only 
a small inlet running into the interior. We, on the 
other hand, contend that Portland channel is as it 
is described on the map of Vancouver on which the 
treaty of 1825 seems to have been based, namely, 
all that channel of water which runs west of Pearse 
Island." '' 

" Mr. Alexander Begg, ' ' author of the History of British 
Columbia," reprinted at Victoria, British Columbia, from the 
British Columbian Mining Record for June, July and August, 
1900, an article entitled. Review of the Alaskan Boundary Ques- 
tion. Mr. Begg also contributed to the Scottish Geographical 
Magazine for January and February, 1901, very much the same 
article under the title of Review of the Alaskan Boundary Ques- 
tion. In these two papers, Mr. Begg devoted much space to show 
that the Portland Channel and the Portland Canal were separate 
and distinct bodies of water. The replies of Sir Wilfred Laurier 
to Colonel Prior on that subject thoroughly answer that part of 
the Canadian claim, except that the Canadian Premier was in 



PORTLAND CHANNEL : PRIOR AND LAURIER. I 1 3 

Colonel Prior then remarked : — " I do not think 
that this has anything to do with the question whether 
the map is wrongly marked. Whatever boundary is 
described on it, should be marked provisional." 

To this comment Sir Wilfred Laurier answered : — 
" The only provisional line we have agreed upon is 

error in claiming that the opening of the Portland Channel into 
the ocean lay north instead of south of Wales and Pearse Islands. 

Mr. Begg also has something to say about the negotiations pre- 
vious to the treaty, but he does not refer to many vital passages 
that show that the English negotiators — first Sir Charles Bagot 
and afterwards Sir Stratford Canning — had to concede one point 
after another, until they finally agreed to the original proposition 
of the Muscovite negotiators that Russia should have a lisiere on 
the mainland above fifty-four forty expressly to shut off England 
from access to the sea at all points north of the Portland Canal. 

Li spite of Sir Wilfred Laurier' s statement in the spring of 
1901 in the Dominion Parliament that Mr. Begg's contention of 
running the frontier line north instead of east from Cape Chacon, 
which is at the southern extremity of Prince of Wales Island, 
was untenable, Mr. Begg appears to stand by his former as- 
sertions in the following letter which appeared in the Colonist 
of Victoria, British Columbia, December 4th, 1902. The able 
and forcible letter of Mr. Seward to which Mr. Begg refers will 
be found in note 108 on page 175. 

"THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY. 
"Sir:— 

' ' Two mighty men of war have recently appeared to bolster 
up the forlorn hope of the boundary question. One is a Phila- 
delphia lawyer, of some note, judging from the numerous spread- 
eagle titles attached to his name in a book called ' The Alasko- 
Canadian Frontier ' — the titles are as follows : ' Book, by Thomas 
Willing Balch, A. B. (Harvard), Member of the Philadelphia 
Bar ; the American Philosophical Society ; the American Histori- 
cal Association, etc. ; Author of the Brooke Family of Whit- 



114 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

around Lynn canal, and if my hon. friend will look 
carefully at the relief map which is exhibited in the 
library, he will see that that is the only provisional 
line we have agreed to." 

But as is seen from Sir Wilfred Laurier's answers 
to Colonel Prior, acknowledging the untenableness 

church, Hampshire, England,' etc. The paper was read at the 
annual meeting of the Franklin Institute, January 15th, 1902. 

"Mr. Balch quotes a portion of the Treaty of 1825, but he 
does not apply it in the least degree in the book he has published. 
Without referring to the Treaty in his arguments the controversy 
is futile, and I take leave of Mr. Balch and his beautiful printed 
brochure. 

" The other warlike hero who comes forward, is plain Frederick 
W. Seward, heralded as the ' son of the great War Secretary, 
who negotiated the purchase of Alaska.' Young Mr. Seward, in 
a recent letter to the New York Tribune, tells us that he visited 
Alaska last summer, and discussed the claim put forward by Can- 
ada, as a monstrous one, without a shadow of foundation. But 
if Mr. Seward will ' trot out the Treaty ' in connection with an 
honest, unbiased tribunal, without any subterfuge, Canada will be 
found quite willing and ready to submit the question. Let us be 
judged by the Treaty and no subterfuge. Mr. Seward concludes 
his remarks by stating ' the only thing which is open to discussion 
or which requires settlement in connection with the Alaskan bound- 
ary, is its delineation in place, on a line corresponding in all essen- 
tials with the line which has been recognized since the boundary 
was first defined by treaty between the government of Russia and 
Great Britain. When Canada is prepared to have this done,' 
says he, ' the United States will cheerfully co-operate in the work. 
There is no Alaska boundary question in any respect, save this.' 
What about running east from Cape Chacon, instead of north, 
according to the Treaty ? 

"ALEXANDER BEGG. 

"December 2nd, 1902." 



ENGLISH AND CANADIAN MAPS. II 5 

of the contention that the Portland Channel and the 
Portland Canal were not one and the same sinuosity, 
the Canadian Premier did approve the claim that Can- 
ada advanced at the Quebec Conference in 1898 that 
the opening of the Portland Channel into the ocean 
was not through the natural thalweg that flows be- 
tween Port Simpson on the south and Pearse and 
Wales Islands on the north, but through a much 
narrower and practically unnavigable channel to the 
north of these two islands. 

On many maps, including Canadian and English 
maps, the line was drawn to the south of Wales and 
Pearse Islands. For instance, Arrowsmith, on his map 
issued in 1864, marked the line south of Wales and 
Pearse Islands. (See Map No. 16.) The Canadians 
on an official Government map of the " Railways of 
Canada," published in the year 1884, distinctly drew 
the frontier through the passage of water south of 
Wales and Pearse Islands, and this channel is 
marked on that map " Portland Inlet." (See Map 
No. 27.) These maps locate this part of the frontier 
in opposition to the British claims by the evidence of 
their own cartographers. Furthermore, the opening 
of Portland Channel into Dixon's Entrance is shown 
by two official maps of the British Government. 
Chart number 2431 of the British Admiralty, pub- 
lished on the 13th of July, 1865, corrected to Feb- 
ruary, 1 90 1, on which Observatory Inlet is marked 
according to " Staff Commr. Pender's Survey, 1868," 




British Admiralty Chart, No. 2458, published December 15TH, 1S96, and corrected 
TO March, 1900 : prepared under the direction of Rear Admiral Wharton. 



MAP No. 23. 



ENGUSH AND CANADIAN MAPS. II7 

gives the north west coast of America from Port 
Simpson to Cross Sound. Chart number 2458 of 
the British Admiralty, pubHshed on the 15th of De- 
cember, 1896, corrected to March, 1900, shows the 
coast Hne about Port Simpson and the inner chan- 
nels opposite Prince of Wales Island. (See Map 
No. 23.) On both these charts the passage of 
water south of Pearse and Wales Islands opening 
into Dixon's Entrance is marked " Portland Inlet," 
and the channel to the north of Pearse and Wales 
Islands is marked "Pearse Canal." 

But in addition, it is a rule of International Law 
that where a water boundary is a frontier between 
two States, unless it is expressly otherwise pro- 
vided the line of demarcation between these two 
powers shall pass through the deepest part of the 
water area, that is through the thalweg. The word 
thalweg itself literally means, the way through the 
valley, that is through the deepest part of the 
channel. ^^ 

As far back as 1625, the great Huig van Groot, 
or Grotius, approved the rule that where a river 
was the boundary between two peoples, the frontier 
was understood, unless otherwise provided for, to run 
along the middle of the stream. He said : 

®^ Concerning the historic development of the rule of the 
Thalweg, see the article of Judge Ernest Nys of Brussels in the 
Revue de Droit International (Bruxelles, 1901, page 75) entitled, 
' ' Rivieres et fleuves fronti^res — La Ligne M6diane et le Thalweg 
— un Apergu historique." . . 



Il8 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

" In land defined by a river, its natural boundary, if 
the river changes its course gradually, it changes also 
the boundary of the territory ; and whatever the river 
adds to one side belongs to him to whose land it is 
added ; because each people must be supposed to 
have settled their claims on the understanding that 
the river, as a natural terminus, should divide them 
by a line drawn along its middle. So Tacitus speaks 
of the Rhine as a boundary, so Diodorus of another 
river; and Xenophon calls such a river simply the 
Horizont, the boundary." ^^ 

In recent years, William Edward Hall, an Eng- 
lish Barrister, in his Treatise of International Law, 
says : 

" Where it [a boundary or frontier] follows a river, 
and it is not proved that either of the riparian states 
possesses a good title to the whole bed, their territo- 
ries are separated by a line running down the middle, 
except where the stream is navigable, in which case 

*® " In arcifiniis flumen mutato paulatim cursu mutat et terri- 
torii fines, et quicquid flumen parti alteri adjacit, sub ejus imperio 
est, cui adjectum est : quia scilicet eo animo populus uterque im- 
perium occupasse primitus creditur, ut flumen sui medietate eos 
dirimeret, tanquam naturalis terminus. Tacitus dixit : Certum 
jam alveo Rkenum, quique terminus esse sufficiat. Diodorus 
Siculus, ubi controversiam narrat, quae inter Egestanos et Seli- 
nuntios fuit, norauov, ait, t^ x<^pav opl^ovTo^, amne fines discrimi- 
nante. Et Xenophon talem amnem simpliciter rov Spii^ovTa, id est, 
fimtorem, vocat." De Jure Belli ac Pads : Lib. II., Cap. III., 

XVI., 2. 



PORTLAND channel: THE THALWEG. II9 

the centre of the deepest channel, or, as it is 
usually called, the Thalweg, is taken as the bound- 
ary." '' 

The Swiss, Alphonse Rivier, for many years and at 
the time of his death, Consul-General of his country 
to Belgium, in his Treatise, Principes du Droit Des 
Gens, says : 

"When a water course is a frontier, the bed can 
be entirely in one of the territories [adjoining], the 
frontier following one of the banks. 

« >1* »!■ *Z* *^ *Z* 

v^ w^ w^ «^ *i* 

"This frontier must be proved, it is not presumed. 
In case of doubt, the frontier line shall be the middle 
of the bed. Such at least is the ancient rule, still in 
vigor as a general rule for non navigable water 
courses, simple brooks, while it is absolute (deroge) 
for rivers and streams owing to a more and more 
constant usage, which numerous treaties have sanc- 
tioned for almost a century. According to this cus- 
tom, the limit is in the middle, not of the bed but of 
the current or thread of water, which is called to-day 
the Thalweg, a German word which signifies chemin 
du val, in English mid-channel. This system has the 
advantage of giving to the two countries equal facili- 
ties to use the water course ; besides, the thalweg, 
although variable owing to the continuous action of 

^"Fourth edition, Oxford, 1895, page 127; this edition was 
printed after Mr. Hall's death, but the first two hundred and 
seventy-two pages were already in type when he died. 



I20 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

the running water, is less so, however, than the me- 
dian Hne."'^ 

Halleck, an American, in his hiteriiational Law, 
says : '^^ 

"Where a navigable river forms the boundary of 
conterminous states, the middle of the channel — the 
filuni aqtiae or thalweg — is generally taken as the 
line of their separation, the presumption of law being 
that the right of navigation is common to them both. 
But this presumption may be rebutted or destroyed 
by actual proof of the exclusive title of one of the ri- 
parian proprietors to the entire river. Such title may 
have been acquired by prior occupancy, purchase, 

" " Lorsq'un cours d'eau forme fronti^re, le lit peut etreen en- 
tier sur I'un des territoires, la frontiere suivant I'un des bords. 

* ^ * * * * * 

' ' Cette frontiere doit etre prouvee ; on ne la presume pas. En 
cas de doute, la ligne frontiere serait le milieu du lit. Telle est du 
moins la r^gle ancienne, encore en vigueur conime regie gen^rale 
pour les cours d'eau non navigables, les simples ruisseaux, tandis 
qu'il y est d6rog6 pour les fleuves et rivieres par un usage de plus 
en plus constant, que des traites nombreux ont sanctionn6 depuis 
pr^s d'un siecle. D'apres cet usage, la limite est au milieu, non 
du lit, mais du courant ou fil de I'eau, qu'onappelle aujourd'hui le 
thalweg, mot allemand qui signifie chemin du val ; en anglais 
mid-cJiannel. Ce systeme a I'avantage de donner aux deux pays 
limitrophes des facilit6s %ales pour utiliser le cours d'eau ; en 
outre, le thalweg , tout variable qu'il est en suite de Taction con- 
tinue de I'eau courante, Test cependant moins que la ligne m6- 
diane. ' ' Principes du Droit des Gens par Alphonse Rivier, Paris, 
1896, Volume I., pages 167-168. 

'■^ Halleck' s Inteniatio?ial Law: Third edition revised by Sir 
Sherston Baker, Bart., of Lincoln's Inn and Barrister-at-Law, 
London, 1893, Volume L, page 171. 



PORTLAND channel: THE THALWEG. 121 

cession, treaty, or any of the modes by which other 
public territory may be acquired. But where the 
river not only separates the conterminous states, but 
also their territorial jurisdictions, the thalweg, or 
middle current, forms the line of separation through 
the bays and estuaries through which the waters of 
the river flow into the sea. As a general rule, this 
line runs through the middle of the deepest channel, 
although it may divide the river and its estuaries into 
two very unequal parts. But the deeper channel 
may be less suited, or totally unfit, for the purposes 
of navigation, in which case the dividing line would 
be in the middle of the one best suited and ordi- 
narily used for that object. The division of the 
islands in the river and its bays would follow the 
same rule." 

Bluntschli, a Swiss, who for many years taught the 
Laws of Nations at the University of Heidelberg, 
says in his Code of International Law: 

"298. 

" If a river is the boundary between two States and 
it has not become the exclusive property of one of 
them, the frontier, in case of doubt, is taken to pass 
through the Thalweg. 

" In the case of navigable rivers, the Thalweg is 
considered in doubtful cases as the middle of the 
river. 

*•!• •£> «b «Ja aSft 

•I* Sfm •{• *!• ^* 



122 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



"301 



" In the same way, the middle of a lake serves as 
the line of demarcation between the opposite ripa- 
rian States, unless another boundary is designated 
by usage or treaty. The free navigation of the lake 
is therewith as a rule accorded to the inhabitants of 
both shores. 

•' In this case the middle must be measured from 
both shores, as there is no Thalweg, or at least it 
is not as distinct in lakes as in rivers. 

****** 



" 303- 



" When two States, which touch the high seas, 
are so close to one another that the territorial 
waters [Kustensajwi) of the one overlaps the terri- 
torial waters of the other, both States are bound 
to accord to each other the right of sovereignty 
[Kustensc/mtz) in the common area or else to agree 
upon a dividing line. 

" The two States are in this case in about the 
same position as the Riparian States of a river or 
a lake. They are both concurrently sovereign."^ 



18 ,, 



298. 

"Bildet ein FIuss die Grenze und ist derselbe nicht in den 
ausschliesslichen Besitz des einen Uferstates gelangt, so wird im 
Zweifel angenommen, die Mitte des Flusses sei die Grenze. 

"Bei schieffbaren Flussen wird im Zweifel der Thalweg als 
Mitte angenommen. 

******* 



ARGUMENT OF CANADA. 1 23 

The other or second important demand of Canada, 
which seems to have originated about 1884, and 
which was formulated a year or two later by General 
Cameron, is that the boundary line shall not pass 
inland around all the sinuosities that bulge into the 
mainland between Mount Saint Elias and fifty-four 
degrees forty minutes, but that it shall run close 
along side of the coast-line and across most or all 

"301. 

' ' Ebenso wird die Mitte eines Landsees als Grenze zwischen 
den entgegengesetzten Uferstaten vermuthet, wenn nicht dutch 
Vertriige oder Uebung eine andere Grenze bestimmt ist. Dane- 
ben wird die freie Schifffahrt auf den See fur beiderlei Uferbe- 
woliner als Regel anerkannt. 

" Hier muss die Mitte von beiden Ufern ausgemessen werden, 
da es einen Thalweg nicht gibt, oder wenigstens derselbe nicht 
ebenso deutlich ist, wie bei Flussen. 

He :(c He * i|: * H: 

"303- 

"Wenn zwei Staten, welche an das freie Meer Grenzen, 
einander so nahe sind, dass der Kiistensaum je des einen Stats 
in den Kiistensaum des andern hiniiberreicht, so sind sie ver- 
pflichtet, einander in dem gemeinsamen Gebiet wechselseitig den 
Kiistenschutz zuzugestehen, oder iiber eine Scheidelinie sich zu 
vereinbaren. 

"Das Verhaltniss der beiden Uferstaten wird ahnlich wie in 
den Fallen der Fluss- oder Seegrenze. Es tritt eine concurri- 
RENDE Gebietshoheit ein." 

Das Moderne Volkerrecht der Civilisirten Staten als Rechts- 
buch Dargestellt von Dr. J. C. Bluntschli : Nordlingen, 1878. 

In the authorized French translation by M. Lardy (1870) Le 
Droit International Codifi^ the above paragraphs are rendered 
in these terms : 



124 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

of the estuaries that cut into the continent above 
the Portland Channel or Canal. Canada bases this 
demand upon the rule of International Law, that all 
sea waters along a coast line are for one league or 
three miles territorial waters, and that where even 
a fiord or arm of the sea is only two leagues or six 
miles across from shore to shore, from that line in- 
land the rest of the estuary is territorial waters. 

"298. 

" Lorsqu'une riviere forme la limite, et qu'elle n'est pas deve- 
nue propri6t6 exclusive d'un des 6tats riverains, on admet dans 
le doute que la fronti^re passe par le milieu de la riviere. 

' ' La thalweg des rivieres navigables est dans le doute regard6 
comme le milieu. 

4c * 4c ♦ :(( * :|( 

"301. 

* * Le milieu d' un lac sert 6galement de ligne de demarcation 
entre les deux 6tats riverains, a moins qu'une autre limite n'ait 
6t6 consacr^e par 1' usage ou par les trait6s. On reconnait dans 
la r^gle aux habitants des deux rives le droit de libre navigation. 

* ' On doit prendre ici pour ligne fronti^re le milieu du lac, 
parce qu'il n'y a pas de thalweg des lacs. 

♦ He 4c >tt * ♦ 4t 

"303- 

" Lorsque deux 6tats sont situ6s au bord d'une mer libre, 
mais si 6troite que la bande de mer faisant partie du territoire de 
Tun, empiete sur la bande de mer qui depend du territoire de 
r autre, ces deux 6tats sont tenus de s'accorder r^ciproquement 
les droits de souverainet6 sur I'espace commun, ou de fixer 
ensemble une ligne de demarcation. 

' ' Les deux 6tats se trouvent ici a peu pr^s dans la m^me posi- 
tion que les etats riverains d'un fleuve ou d'un lac. lis sont 
tous deux concurrement souverains." 



ARGUMENT OF CANADA. I 25 

Consequently, they say that as In the treaty of 1825 
it was provided that the frontier between the British 
possessions and the Russian lisi^re should be a line 
drawn along the crest of the mountains "situees 
parallelement a la cote " and that in case at any 
point the summit of the mountains should prove to 
be further than ten marine leagues from the ocean, 
that then the line of demarcation should be drawn 
by a line parallel to the sinuosities of the shore, 
from which it shall be never further than ten leagues 
— the Canadians say that in estimating the coast line 
the outer edge of the territorial waters must be 
taken, and that from this imaginary line the ten 
league limit must be computed. Thus they main- 
tain, that the line of frontier does not pass around 
all the sinuosities of the coast, but across many 
of them, leaving the upper reaches, as the greater 
part of the upper extremity of the Lynn Canal, for 
example, within Canadian Territory.''^ 



" From the first the Canadians have veered and changed about 
continually in their demands. Canadian writers by suppressing 
some facts and twisting and manipulating others to suit their 
wishes, have managed to present to their countrymen and their 
kindred in Britain some apparently plausible arguments in sup- 
port of the Canadian claim. The Canadian method of citing 
evidence brings to mind the following anecdote from the pen 
of Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth. (Chapter 
XXXVI. Note) : ' ' Sinclair was a singer : and complained to 
the manager that in the operatic play of Rob Roy he had a 
multitude of mere words to utter between the songs. 'Cut, 
my boy, cut ! ' said the manager. On this, vox. et p. n. cut 



126 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

In support of this proposition they invoke the 
well known principle of International Law that 
a State has jurisdiction over its marginal waters 
to the distance of one marine league from the 
shore. And they cite Bluntschli and other world 
famed authorities in support of their position. 

An argument pressed to support the Canadian 
wish that the outer edge of the territorial waters 
should be taken instead of the shore line of the 
sinuosities of the coast in measuring the ten marine 
leagues inland, is that in both the English and the 
Russian draft treaties, the word vier was used in the 
French copies, while in the French version of the 
actual treaty the word vier has given place to ocean. 
In the draft convention that George Canning sent 
July 12, 1824, to Sir Charles Bagot as a basis for ne- 
gotiations, among the words used in Article III. of 
that draft to designate how the eastern boundary of 
the lisiere should run occurs the expression, " depuis 
la mer vers Tinterieur" (from the sea towards the in- 
terior). In Article II. of the Russian counter-draft, in 
which the eastern boundary of the lisiere is described, 
the expression used is " a partir du bord de la mer" 

Scott, and doubtless many of his cuts would not have discredited 
the condensers of evidence. But only one of his master-strokes 
has reached posterity. His melodious organs had been taxed 
with this sentence : ' Rashleigh is my cousin ; but, for what 
reason I cannot divine, he is my bitterest enemy.' This he con- 
densed and delivered thus : ' Rashleigh is my cousin, for what 
reason I cannot divine.' " 



MER AND OC6aN THEORY. 1 27 

(starting from the sea shore). Finally in the treaty 
of 1825 itself, among the words used in Article IV. 
to describe the limits to the east of the lisiere occurs 
the expression, "se trouveroit a la distance de plus 
de 10 lieues marines de I'ocean." It is argued that 
from this substitution of the word ocean in the treaty 
for the word mer that was used in the two draft- 
conventions the limit of the ocean was intended as 
the line from which the ten marine leagues inland 
should be measured, and it is urged that by the 
use of the word ocean instead of mer the salt water 
outside of the islands was meant. 

The absurdity of this argument, however, is proved 
by the fact that the words ocean and mer in French 
geographies and in International Law are used in- 
terchangeably to mean the salt water that encircles 
all the land on the earth. 

To begin with the words mer and ocean are both 
used in the treaty itself to mean the same thing, 
to wit: in Article I., Ocean Pacifique, and in Arti- 
cle VI., Mer Pacifique. 

Then in the Petite Geographie Ancienne of Meissas 
and Michelot published at Paris in 1857, the mers 
of Europe are described on pages three and four 
as follows : 

"4 Mers. 

"On comptait en Europe treize mers principales, 
dont trois grandes et dix petites. 

"Les trois grandes etaient: 1° I'Ocean Hyperboree 



128 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

(ocean Glacial du nord) ; 2** I'ocean Atlantique ; 3° la 
mer Interleure (Mediterranee). Les dix petites etai- 
ent: 1° la mer Germanique (mer du Nord); 2° la mer 
Hibernienne (mer d'Islande), formee par I'ocean At- 
lantique;" and so on. In this quotation it is seen 
that the two words are used interchangeably. 

In the Petite Geographie Methodique, by the same 
authors, published at Paris in 1896, the watery mass 
of the earth is thus described: 

" On donne le nom d'ocea?i ou de 7ner a la vaste 
etendue d'eau salec qui couvre les trois quarts du 
globe. 

"On appelle encore mers diverses parties de 
I'ocean auxquelles on donne des noms particuliers." 

A litde further on Meissas and Michelot say : 

" L'Ocean-Glacial du nord et celui du sud s'ap- 
pellent aussi mers Glaciates ou mers Polaires!' 

How the two words are used interchangeably in 
International Law is well expressed by Rivier who 
was a thorough master of his native language. 

"La mer, ou I'Ocean," he says,"^^ "est I'immense 
etendue d'eau salee qui entoure et relie les continents. 

5i* ■!• JjS SjS •!* H* 

" Elle est libre. 

" La mer libre est done la haute mer, qu'on nomme 
aussi la pleine mer. Le langage juridique use de ces 
divers termes indifferemment, et le meme sens est 



" Pri7icipes du Droit des Gens par Alphonse Rivier : Paris, 
1896, Volume I., pages 234-235. 



MER AND OCEAN. I 29 

generalement attribue aux mots mer et Ocean em- 
ployes sans qualificatif. Quant on enonce le principe 
de la liberte de la mer, ou des mers, il s'agit de la 
haute mer." 

Of the meaning of mer and ocean, Littre, who was a 
member of V Academie Fran^aise, says in his Diction- 
naire de la Langue Fraiigaise : 

" REM. Le mot mer, au singulier, se prend dans 
deux sens : i*' I'amas des eaux qui environne la 
terre ; 2° dans une acception plus restreinte, une 
certaine etendue d'eau salee contigue aux cotes et 
portant un nom particulier comme la mer d'Irlande, 
la mer du Nord, etc." 

"REM. Ocean prend un O majuscule quand il 
signifie la vaste etendue d'eau salee qui entoure le 
globe, ou quand il est dit absolument pour ocean 
Atlantique, ou pour le dieu mythologique ; et un o 
minuscule quand on parle des parties de cet ocean : 
I'ocean Atlantique, ou quand il est pris figurement: 
un ocean de feux. On observera que les adjectifs 
qui determinent les parties de I'Ocean prennent une 
majuscule : I'ocean Atlantique, I'ocean Pacifique, 
I'ocean Indien." 

Then defining the adjective Ocea7ie, Littre says : 

" REM. L' Academie [Frangaise] ecrit mer oceane, 
par un o minuscule ; il faudrait un o majuscule, mer 
Oceane, puisqu'on ecrit avec une majuscule mer 
Mediterranee, mer Atlantique, mer Pacifique, etc." 

In the first French dictionary which V Acadimie 



130 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Franfaise published in 1694, the interchangeable 
use of mer and ocea7z is dius attested at that 
time : '^ 

" Mer. s. f. L'amas des eaux qui composent un 
globe avec la terre, & qui la couvrent en plusieurs 
endroits. La grande mer, ou la mer Oceane. mer Medi- 
terranee. mer Atlantique. 7ner Germajiique. mer Bri- 
tannique. mer Pacijique. mer Glaciale. 

^ ^ « .-H :!: « 

" On appelle, La mer Mediterranee, Mer du Le- 
vant, & rOcean, Mer du Ponatit!' 

"Ocean, s. m. La grande mer qui environne 
toute la terre." 

From the above quotations from Littre, backed by 
the first dictionary of the French Academy, it is clear 
that not only the first authority to-day on the meaning 
and value of French words, says that mer and ocean 
can be used interchangeably to mean the salt water 
that envelops the continents, but also that he actu- 
ally uses himself the expressions mer Pacijique and 
r ocean Pacijique. 

Consequently the attempt to draw a distinction 
as to the meaning of the words mer and ocean used 

'* Z,<? Didionnaire de V Academic Frangoise dedU au Roy. 
A Paris : Chez la Veuve de Jean Baptiste Coignard, Imprimeur 
ordinaire du Roy, & de I'Academie Frangoise, rue S. Jacques, a 
la Bible d'Or: et Chez Jean Baptiste Coignard, Imprimeur & 
Libraire ordinaire du Roy, & de TAcad^mie Fran^oise, rue S. 
Jacques pres S. Severin, au Livre d'Or. — M.DC.LXXXXIV. 
Avec privilege de sa Majesty. 



"PARALLELE AUX SINUOSITES DE LA COTE. I31 

in the draft-conventions and in the treaty of 1825 
falls to the ground. 

In constructing the theory and argument that, in 
estimating the ten marine leagues inland provided 
for by the fourth article of the treaty, the outer 
edge of the United States territorial waters should 
be taken as the starting point of measurement, the 
Anelo-Canadian advocates have left out of account 
the strict and exact meaning of the last part of the 
fourth article of the treaty of 1825. The French 
text of the treaty was the official version, and the 
Ensflish and the Canadian Governments have both 
recognized it as such." At the end of the fourth 
article of the treaty, it is said that the frontier line 
of the lisiere shall be drawn " parallele aux sinuosi- 
tes de la cote." What does this French expression 
mean ? The significance of this phrase is made ab- 
solutely clear by the use of the words, cote and 
sinuosites. Littre, in his Dictio7inaire de la Laiigue 
Frmtgaise, defines cote in this manner: "||9^ Terme 
de marine. Rivage de la mer. Une cote basse, sab- 
lonneuse, escarpee. Ranger la cote, aller le long 
de la cote. Donner a la cote, echouer. Le cour- 
rant portait a la cote. II lui donna la gouvernement 
de toute la cote de la mer, VAUGEL. Q. C. liv. 
II. ch. 8. Toute la cote etait couverte d'hommes, 

''''Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 500. Dr. Daw- 
son's letter to Sir Charles Tupper of February 7th, 1888 : 
Senate Ex. Doc. No. 146, ^oth Congress, 2d Sessioyi, pages 4—y. 



132 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

d'armes, de chevaux et de chariots en mouvement, 
FEN. Tel. XX. La plupart des peuples des cotes 
de I'Afrique sont sauvages et barbares, MONTESQ. 
Esp. XXI. 2. * * * Se dit, par extension, des 
approches de la terre, jusqu'a une certaine distance 
au large. Une cote pleine d'ecueils. Les pirates 
qui couraient nos cotes. 

* «>t» ■!» «S» •Z> aZ* 

*{* •{• •{• *]• Wf* 

Ati plur. Les contrees voisines de la mer." Thus 
Littre shows that cote means the general shore line 
along salt water. 

In the first dictionary of the French language that 
V Academie Frangaise published in 1694, the mean- 
ing of sinuosite is thus expressed : '^ 

" Sinueux, euse. adj. Qui est tortueux; qui fait 
plusieurs tours & detours. II n' a guere d'usage que 
dans la poesie. Les replis si7tueux cV un serpent, d'une 
couleuvre. le coiirs sinueux de Meandre. 

" Sinuosite. s. f. Estat d'une chose sinueuse. Les 
sinuositez d'un serpent, cette riviere a beaucoup de sijtu- 
ositez, fait beaucoup de sinuositez. 

"On dit aussi, En termes de Chirurgie, qu' Une 
playe a beaucoup de sinuositez, pour dire, qu'EUe fait 

'^ Le Dictio7inaire de V Academie Frangoise dedie aii Roy. A 
Paris ; Chez la Veuve de Jean Baptiste Coignard, Imprimeur or- 
dinaire du Roy, & de I'Acad^mie Franfoise, rue S. Jacques, a 
la Bible d'Or: et Chez Jean Baptiste Coignard, Imprimeur & 
Libraire ordinaire du Roy, & de 1' Academie Franyoise, rue S. 
Jacques pres S. Severin, au Livre d'Or.— M.DC.LXXXXIV. 
Avec privilege de sa Majeste. 



"PARALLELE AUX SINUOSITES DE LA COTE. 1 33 

des tours & des detours. On dit de mesne, qu'//j)/ 
a des endroits sous la terre oil il y a beaucoup de sinuos- 
itez!' Then Littre defines sinuosite as meaning : 
"Qualite de ce qui est sinueux. Cette riviere fait beau- 
coup de sinuosites. II allait dans une chaloupe avec 
deux ingenieurs cotoyer les deux royaumes de Dane- 
mark et de Suede, pour mesurer toutes les sinuosites, 
Font. Czar Pierre. Les jeunes Deliens se melerent 
avec eux (les Atheniens) pour figurer les sinuosites 
du labyrinthe de Crete, Barthel, Anach. ch. 76." Web- 
ster defines sinuosity to mean : " i. The quality of 
being sinuous, or bending in and out. 2. A series of 
bends and turns in arches or other irregular figures ; 
a series of windings. ' A line of coast certainly 
amounting with its simtosities, to more than 700 
miles.' S. Smith." 

Thus back in 1694 ^he men who were officially 
empowered by the State to declare the meaning 
of French words and to regulate French grammar, 
and the great authority' of to-day on the same sub- 
ject, have said that a sinuosity was an indentation 
or a pouch. Such a meaning exactly fits the con- 
figuration of the Lynn Canal or Channel, for instance, 
which is a sinuosite de la cote of the northwest coast 
of North America. The water of the Lynn Canal 
is salt or sea water, not fresh water. And the shores 
that enclose the Lynn Canal are part of the general 
coast line or cote to use the word of the French 
text of the treaty of 1825. Consequently, in 



134 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

finding the frontier line according to the expression 
•* parallele aux sinuosites de la cote," the shore line 
passing around the Lynn Canal must be taken as the 
basis from which to measure the ten marine leagues 
inland and not some imaginary water line cross- 
ing near its mouth. And so in the same way with 
all the other sinuosities or fiords or estuaries that 
cut into the mainland above fifty-four fort)% their 
shore lines must be taken as the lines of depart- 
ure from which to measure the ten marine leagues 
inland. 

Thus by inserting the words sinuosites and cote, the 
negotiators made it perfectly clear that — in directing 
that the eastern line of demarcation of the lisiere 
should be drawn " parallele aux sinuosites de la 
cote," — they meant that the frontier should pass 
around all the sinuosities that advance into the 
mainland and not cut across any of them, so that 
the whole of the Lynn Canal and all the other 
fiords above the Portland Canal would be included 
within the Russian lisiere. For if the line cut across 
the sinuosities of the shore, how could it be parallel to 
them f 

Besides, Mr. William H. Dall of the United States 
Geological Survey has pointed out that the Cana- 
dian argument, that the ten leagues inland should 
be measured from the outer line of the territorial 
waters as the basis of measurement, disproves itself 
through a reductio ad absurdum. 



DALLS ARGUMENT. I 35 

"It happens," he says/^ "that there are none of 
the islands in the archipelago north of Dixon's 
Entrance which do not at some point approach 
within six miles of one another or of the conti- 
nental shore. They are all mountainous. As Gen- 
eral Cameron, if he applies his hypothesis, has no 
right to apply it partially or imperfectly, it will fol- 
low that all the archipelago for that purpose will 
become solid land. Of this ' land ' there would be 
a strip, excluding all of the continent, in no place 
less than fifty and sometimes eighty miles wide. 
Under the treaty not over thirty miles from the 
ocean could be possessed by Russia when not 
mountainous, and as the mountains come to the 
sea nearly all the way from Cape Muzon to Cape 
Spencer, the only property possessed by Russia in 
the archipelago would have been (i) Prince of 
Wales Island, which in the treaty is absolutely 
given to her, and (2) a strip a mile or two in aver- 
age width on the ocean shores of the most sea- 
ward islands. It is perfectly easy to verify this 
if one would take such trouble, and it is certainly 
absurd enough for anybody." 

The Canadians, moreover, overlook that rule of 
International Law, that two States can agree by 
treaty or otherwise, to suspend as between them- 
selves any rule of the Laws of Nations, provided 

"^^ Senate Ex. Doc. No. 146, 50th Co7igress, 2nd Session, 
page 25. 



136 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

that they do not thereby trespass upon the rights 
of other Powers. 

Grotius recognized that two Nations can, as be- 
tween themselves, alter the rules of the Laws of 
Nations. Thus he said : 

" For peoples as well as individuals may by com- 
pact concede to another not only the Rights which 
are theirs specially, but also those which they have in 
common with all men : and when this is done, we 
may say, what Ulpian said when an estate was sold 
on condition that the purchaser should not carry on a 
thunny fishery to the prejudice of the seller, namely, 
that there could not be a servitude over the sea, but 
that the bona fides of the contract required that the 
rule of the sale should be observed ; and therefore 
that the possessors and their successors were under 
a personal obligation to observe the condition."*" 

Von Martens, a representative of Hanover at the 
Diet of the Germanic Confederation, who taught the 
study of International Law at Gottingen in the latter 
part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nine- 

^" ' ' Possunt enim ut singuli, ita et populi pactis, non tantum de 
jure quod proprie sibi competit, sed et de eo quod cum omnibus 
hominibus commune habent, in gratiam ejus cujus id interest 
decedere : quod cum fit, dicendum est quod dixit Ulpianus in ea 
facti specie, qua fundus erat venditus hac lege, ne contra vendi- 
torem piscatio thynnaria exerceretur, man servitutem imponi non 
potuisse, sed bonam fidem contractus exposcere, ut lex vendi- 
tionis servetur. Itaque personas possidentium et in jus eorum 
succedentium obligari." De Jure Balli ac Pads, Lib. II., Cap. 
III. XV., 2. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW. I 37 

teenth centuries, held, concerning the ability of two 
States to change as between themselves the Laws 
of Nations, this opinion : 

" In the same way, it depends upon the free choice 
of a nation to conclude or not treaties with another, 
without that a third power is authorized to stop her, 
so long as these treaties do not injure the right of 
the third power, and without especially that she is 
authorized to force her to conclude a treaty, or to 
accede to it against its will." ^^ 

Phillimore, an English authority on the Laws of 
Nations, says : 

" No treaty between two or more Nations can 
affect the general principles of International Law 
prejudicially to the interests of other Nations not 
parties to such covenant." ^^ 

He says also : 

" Moreover, the Right to enter into lawful Conven- 
tions or Treaties with other States is as unquestion- 
ably inherent in every independent State, as the right 

^' " De meme, 11 depend du libre arbitre d'une nation de cimen- 
ter ou non des trait^s quelconques avec une autre, sans qu'une 
tierce puissance soit autorisee a I'empecher, tant que ces trait^s 
ne blessent pas ses droits, et sans que surtout elle soit autorisee, 
a la forcer de conclure un traits, ou d'y acceder contre son gre." 

Precis du Droit des Gens moderne de V Europe., par G. F. de 
Martens : Paris, 1864, Volume I., § 119—" De la liberty de con- 
clure des Traites," page 320. 



82 



Commentaries upon International Law by Sir Robert Philli- 
more, London, 1879. Third Edition, Volume I., page 46. 



138 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

to make lawful covenants is inherent in every indi- 
vidual" «3 

In recent years, Bluntschli writes : 

"402. 

" States, in so far as they are independent, can 
regulate by treaties the questions which specially 
concern them, and thus create between themselves 
a purely conventional law." ^* 

In addition, the Duke of Wellington in a note to 
Count Lieven, the Russian Ambassador at London 
on November 28th, 1822, also recognized this rule. 
Speaking of the exclusive sovereignty that Russia 
had claimed in the Ukase of 1821 over Bering Sea 
and a considerable part of the Pacific Ocean he said: 

** Commentaries 7ipon International Law, by Sir Robert PhilH- 
more, London, 1882. Third Edition, Volume II., page 69. 

^* Das Moderne V olkerrecht der Civilisirten Staten als Rechts- 
buch Dargestellt von Dr. J. C. Bluntschli: Nordlingen, 1878. 
The original German text of Bluntschli is as follows : 

"402. 

' ' Die Staten konnen als selbstandige Personen ihre besondern 
Rechtsverhaltnisse durch Vertrage unter einander ordnen, so dass 
daraus eigentliches Vertragsrecht entsteht." 

In the authorized French translation of Bluntschli, by M, de 
Lardy, first Secretary to the Swiss Legation at Paris (1870), this 
paragraph is rendered thus : 

"402. 

" Les 6tats, en tant que personnes ind^pendantes, peuvent 
regler par des trait^s les questions qui les concernent sp^cialement, 
et cr6er ainsi entre eux un droit purement conventionel." 



INTERNATIONAL LAW, I 39 

" We contend that no Power whatever can ex- 
clude another from the use of the open sea. A 
Power can exclude itself from the navigation of a 
certain coast, sea, etc., by its own act or engage- 
ment, but it cannot by right be excluded by another. 
This we consider as the law of nations, and we 
cannot negotiate under a paper in which a right is 
asserted inconsistent with this principle." ^^ 

Thus an English statesman of world wide note is 
in accord with the masters of International Law that 
two Nations can, as between themselves, change 
the Laws of Nations. 

Consequently, according to the Laws of Nations 
and the interpretation placed by the Duke of Wel- 
lington upon the rules and regulations in force be- 
tween Nations, the Muscovite and the British Empires 
had ample and perfect authority to disregard, as 
between themselves, a rule of International Law, 
provided that they did not thereby trespass upon 
the rights of other States. Russia and England 
could agree then, as they did by the treaty of Feb- 
ruary, 1825, to take — irrespective of the theory that 
for purposes of sovereignty territorial waters are 
" land" — the shore line of the mainland as the basis 
of computation in measuring ten marine leagues in- 
land. And the evidence is abundant to show that 
the shore of the continent itself was exactly the 



85 



Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 35 and also page 391. 



140 



THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



base line that they intended should be used to 
compute the ten leagues towards the interior and 
not an imaginary water line passing from headland 
to headland. 

Ex-Secretary of State, John W. Foster, has shown 
too, that the negotiations that resulted in the treaty 
of 1825 cut off the British Traders from all access 
to the interior waters of the lisiere except by special 
license. The seventh article of the treaty provided, 
" that, for the space of ten years from signature of 
the present convention, the vessels of the two Powers, 
or those belonging to their respective subjects, shall 
mutually be at liberty to frequent, without any hin- 
drance whatever, all the interior seas, gulfs, havens, 
and creeks on the coast mentioned in article three 
for the purpose of fishing and of trading with the 
natives," The negotiations were broken off a second 
time because the Russian plenipotentiaries refused to 
make perpetual this right to frequent without hin- 
drance the inland waters. When the negotiations 
were renewed, they were resumed upon the basis of 
the fourth article of the Russo-American treaty of 
1824.^^ In referring to this point. Secretary George 



86 "Article Quatri^me. 

" II est n^anmoins entendu que 
pendant un terme de dix ann^es, h 
compter de la signature de la pr^- 
sente Convention, lesvaisseaux des 
deux Puissances, ou qui appartien- 
droient k leurs citoyens ou sujets 
respectifs, pourront r<Sciproque- 



" Article Fourth. 

"It is nevertheless understood 
that during a term of ten years, 
counting from the signature of the 
present convention, the ships of 
both powers, or which belong to 
their citizens or subjects respec- 
tively, may reciprocally frequent 



FOSTERS ARGUMENT. I4I 

Canning said in his instructions to Sir Stratford 
Canning: " Russia cannot mean to give the United 
States of America what slie withholds from us, nor 
to withhold from us anything that she consented to 
give to the United States." ^'^ With pungent force 
Mr. Foster has pointed out how the provisions of 
the seventh article of the treaty of 1825 show that 
all the inland waters of the lisiere in their whole 
extent were to belong to Russia. He has said that, 
*' this ten years' privilege is inconsistent with any 
other interpretation of the treaty than the complete 
sovereignty of Russia over, not only a strip of terri- 
tory on the mainland which follows around the sinu- 
osity of the sea, but also of the waters of all bays or 
inlets extending from the ocean into the mainland. 
This is the more manifest when the subsequent his- 
tory respecting the provision of article four of the 
American and article seven of the British treaty is 
recalled. At the expiration of the time of ten years 
the Russian Minister at Washington gave notice to 
the Government of the United States that the privi- 
lege had expired, and a notification to that effect 
was made in the public Press of the United States. 



ment frequenter sans entrave quel- 
conque, les mers int^rieures, les 
golfes, havres et criques sur la c6te 
mentionn^e dans I'article prece- 
dent, afin d'y faire la p^che et le 
commerce avec les naturels du 
pays." 

^'^ Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 447 



without any hindrance whatever 
the interior seas, gulfs, harbors, 
and creeks upon the coast men- 
tioned in the preceding article, for 
the purpose of fishing and trading 
with the natives of the country." 



142 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Persistent efforts were made by the United States 
to have the privilege extended for another period of 
ten years, but it was firmly refused by Russia. The 
British privilege was likewise terminated upon the 
expiration of the ten years mentioned, and this 
article of the treaty was never again revived." ^^ 

Furthermore, it is a fact that George Canning in 
his instructions to Sir Charles Bagot, of January 15th, 
1824,^^ stated that while the British Government 
wished to restrict the extent of Muscovite territory as 
much as possible, yet it was ready to give, as a quid 
pro quo for the repeal by the Russian Government 
of the Ukase of 182 1, an eastern frontier line for the 
Russian lisiere one hundred miles back from the 
ocean, and to have the line to the Arctic Ocean 
drawn along the one hundred and thirty fifth de- 
gree of longitude. 

Canning said : — 

**It is absolutely essential, therefore, to guard 
against any unfounded pretensions, or any vague 
expectation of Russia to the eastward, and for this 
purpose it is necessary that whatever degree of lati- 
tude be assumed, a definite degree of longitude 
should be assigned as a limit between the territorial 
rights of the two Powers. 

" If your Excellency can obtain the strait which 

^ The Alaskan Boundary, by the Hon. John W. Foster, page 
439- 



89 



Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., pages 419-420. 



canning's hundred miles LISlfeRE. 1 43 

separates the islands from the mainland as the bound- 
ary, the prolongation of the line drawn through that 
strait would strike the mainland near Mount Elias — 
the lowest point of unquestioned Russian discovery. 
But if that were too much to insist upon, the 135th 
degree of longitude, as suggested by your Excellency, 
northward from the head of Lynn's Harbour, might 
suffice. 

" It would, however, in that case, be expedient to 
assign, with respect to the mainland southward of 
that point, a limit, say, of 50 or 100 miles from the 
coast, beyond which the Russian posts should not 
be extended to the eastward. We must not on any 
account admit the Russian territory to extend at any 
point to the Rocky Mountains." 

Such an agreement would have included in Rus- 
sian America or Alaska all the Klondike gold 
district. 

The facts already cited show how absurd and unjust 
is the claim that Canada presented at the Quebec 
Conference in 1898 to the upper reaches of the sinu- 
osities that cut into the continental shore above fifty- 
four forty. And yet, there is still more English and 
Canadian evidence of great importance — which Ca- 
nadian writers have ignored — that practically debars 
both the British and the Canadian Governments from 
pleading in support of the Canadian demands to an 
outlet on tide water above the Portland Channel or 
Canal. 



144 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

In 1 901, three years after the territorial claims of 
Canada were presented at the Quebec Conference 
in 1898, a map "North West Canada & British 
Columbia " shovvincr the dioceses of the Church of 
England in Canada was published in the Proceed- 
ings of the Church Missionary Society,^*^ (See Map 
No. 24.) On this map the boundaries of the dio- 
ceses are marked with heavy dotted blue lines. 
And the western limits of the dioceses of Caledonia 
and Selkirk, which abut against Alaska, are drawn 
precisely where the Muscovite and the American 
Governments have always maintained the frontier 
is located. This semi-official map, therefore, shows 
that three years after the assembling of the Anglo- 
American Joint High Commission, the Church of 
England, through its representative, the Church 
Missionary Society, considered that the field of its 
missionary labors in Canada, extended only as far 
west as the boundary claimed by the United States. 

At the Paris Exposition of 1878, the Canadian 
Government exhibited a map prepared the previous 
year, showing the boundaries of the Dominion, which 
received, on account of the excellency of its draftsman- 
ship, a first prize. On this map the frontier between 

'" Proceedings of the Church Missio?iary Society for Africa and 
the East: One- Hundred-and-Second- Year, 1900-1901. London 
Church Missionary House, Salisbury Square, 1901, "North 
West Canada & British Columbia. C. M. S. Report PI. 10." 
(Opposite page 499.) 




Map in the Church Missionary Society Proceedings, 1901, showing 

Dioceses in Canada. 



THE 



MAP No. 24. 



146 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Canada and Alaska was marked, it Is understood, in 
accordance with the Russian and the United States 
ideas of the boundary. This map hung thereafter 
for a number of years in the ParHament Building at 
Ottawa until it "disappeared" about 1886. While it 
is not possible at present to give a reproduction of 
this map, three others, more or less rare, are at hand, 
which show what the Canadian authorities thought 
was the boundary the year immediately before the 
Paris Exposition of 1878, and also six years after- 
wards, at the time General Cameron was beginning 
to formulate the myth that Canada has ever since 
reiterated and gradually perfected. The copy of the 
first of these maps, which was published in 1877, 
belonged to the late Pierre Margry,^^ for many years 
keeper of the Archives of the Ministry of Marine at 
Paris. The map is entitled : " Map of the north west 
part of Canada * * * by Thomas Devine * * * 
By order of the Hon. Joseph Cauchon, commis- 
sioner of Crown lands. Crown department, Toronto, 
* * * 1877." This official Canadian map pub- 
lished in 1877, upholds, as the accompanying repro- 
duction shows, the United States frontier claim. 
(See Map No. 25.) On an official Canadian map 
of British Columbia, published in 1884, while the 
frontier line is not marked along the Portland 
Channel but from Cape Chacon to the head ot 



81 



This map is now in the possession of the writer. 




I 












Map OF THE NORTH WEST PART OF Canada * * * by Thomas Devink * * * 
By order of the Hon. Joseph Cauchon, commissioner of Crown 
LANDS Crown department, Toronto * * * 1877-" 

MAP No. 25. 



148 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Behm's Canal in fifty-six degrees north latitude, 
yet from that point the frontier line, though some- 
times marked too close to the shore, is drawn so 
as to include all the sinuosities of the mainland 
in their entirety in American territory. (See Map 
No. 26.) And again on another Canadian Govern- 
ment map, issued in 1884, " Map shewing the Rail- 
ways of Canada, to accompany Annual Report on 
Railway Statistics, 1884, Collingwood Schreiber, Chief 
Engineer and Genl. Manager Canadian Government 
railways," the frontier rims south of Pearse Island, 
then up the Portland Channel, and then far inland, 
sustaining absolutely the contention of the United States 
and overthrowing all the Canadian arguments about 
measuring the ten leagues inland from, the outer line 
of the territorial waters. (See Map No. 27.) 

It is difficult to see how the Canadian government 
can in any way evade the evidence furnished against 
it by these official maps. But the British Imperial 
Government is even more sharply blocked by its 
own official admissions from backing up the Canadian 
claims. For upon the British " Admiralty Chart No. 
787," giving the North-west coast of America from 
** Cape Corrientes, Mexico, to Kadiak Island," pre- 
pared in 1876 by F. J. Evans, R. N., published in 
1877 and corrected up to April i8g8, the frontier of 
the United States is marked from the Arctic Ocean 
down along the one hundred and forty-first degree of 
longitude west from Greenwich, and then advancing 
















( 






^^^ 

::-l"' 



v-O-' 



-vN''"i /^ 









:;/j 



0:.., ,_, 



■\] 



^. 






7« 



Zay«, J 






iwvilitl 



■■4^CB 






Official Canadian Map of British Columbia, 1884. 
MAP No. 26. 




Map shewing the Railways of Canada, to accompany annual report on Railway 
Statistics, 1884, Collingwood Schreiber, Chief Engineer and Genl. Manager 
Canadian Government Railways." Compiled by Canadian Pacific Railway. 



MAP No. 27. 



BRITISH ADMIRALTY CHART NO. 787. I5I 

on the continent but passing round the sinuosities of 
the coast so as to give a continuous lisiere of territory 
cutting off the Dominion of Canada from all contact 
with any of the fiords or sinuosities that bulge into the 
continent between Mount Saint Elias and the Port- 
land Channel, the frontier is drawn to the head of 
the Portland Channel at about fifty-six degrees. 
(See Map No. 22.) But not satisfied with this official 
confirmation of the Russian and the United States 
claims, which was made only five months before the 
Quebec Conference met, the British Admiralty ac- 
tually renewed upon this same chart, corrected to August 
igoi, more than two years after the conference ad- 
journed, their sanction of the boundary claimed first 
by Russia, and afterwards by the United States. (See 
Map No. I.) Thus the British Government itself has 
upheld both before the assembling of the Joint High 
Commission and also since that body adjourned the 
territorial claims held and maintained by both the 
Russian and the United States Governments, whereby 
Canada is not entitled to an outlet upon tide water 
above fifty four forty ^ In the face of these two 

»*I bought one copy of Admiralty Chart No. 787, corrected to 
April, 1898, at Edward Stanford's, 26 and 27 Cockspur, Charing 
Cross, S. W., London, in September, 1901, and two copies of 
the same chart corrected to August, 1901, at Stanford's in Lon- 
don, in September, 1902. 

A section of Admiralty Chart No. 787 corrected to April, 
1898, showing the Alaskan lisiere, was reproduced in The Alaska- 
Canadian Frontier ( The Journal of the Franklin Institute, March, 



152 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

issues (1898 and 1901) of Chart No. 787, how can 
any British statesman in the future argue in favor 
of the Canadian claims ? 

But there is still more official English evidence that 
blocks the Canadian demands. 

When the Duke of Wellington was about to start 
in 1822 to represent England at the International 
Congress of Verona, he received from Secretary- 
Canning instructions to urge upon the attention of 
the Russian plenipotentiaries at that Congress the 
protest of the British Government against the Ukase 
of 1 82 1. In those instructions, after consulting and 
obtaining the opinion of the great English jurist 
Lord Stowell (earlier Sir William Scott), Canning 
wrote to the Duke of Wellington : 

" Enlightened statesmen and jurists have long held 
as insignificant all titles of territory that are not 
founded on actual occupation, and that title is, in 
the opinion of the most esteemed writers on public 
law to be established only by public use."^^ 

In a Memorandum on the Russian Ukase of 182 1, 
that the Duke of Wellington wrote at Verona, Octo- 
ber 17th, 1822, for Count Nesselrode, he said: 

"The best writers on the laws of nations do not 

1902). A reprint of this article was sent to all the members of 
the present Congress, including Mr. Griffith of Indiana who there- 
upon called attention to that chart in the House on May 13, 1902. 
See the Congressional Record^ May 14th, 1902, page 5825. 



93 



Fur Seal Arbitration, Volume IV., page 388. 



OCCUPATION AND USE. 1 53 

attribute the exclusive sovereignty, particularly of 
continents, to those who have first discovered them ; 
and although we might on good grounds dispute with 
Russia the priority of discovery of these continents, 
we contend that the much more easily proved, more 
conclusive, and more certain title of occupation and 
use, ought to decide the claim of sovereignty."^ 

In addition. Sir Robert Phillimore, a leading author- 
ity upon questions of International Law, has thus de- 
scribed what confers upon a Nation title through 
occupation. 

"The next step," he says,^^ "is to consider what 
facts constitute occupation ; what are the signs and 
emblems of its having taken place : for it is a clear 
principle of International Law, that the title may 
not be concealed, that the intent to occupy must be 
manifested by some overt or external act. 

*«b •!• al* ila •!* 

•!« w^ ^i w^ *ft 

"These acts, then, by the common consent of na- 
tions, must be use of and settlement in the discovered 
territories. 

Ht ^ ^ :{: H: ^ 

"Indeed, writers on International Law agree that 
Use and Settlement, or, in other words, continuous 
use, are indispensable elements of occupation prop- 

^ Fur Seat Arbitration, Volume IV., page 389. 

^ Commentaries upon International Law by Sir Robert Philli- 
more, D. C. L., a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable 
Privy Council, and Judge of the High Court of Admiralty. 
Third Edition, London, 1879. Volume I., pages 331, 333, 334. 



1 54 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

erly so called. The mere erection of crosses, land 
marks, and inscriptions is ineffectual for acquiring or 
maintaining an exclusive tide to a country of which 
no real use is made. 

" But when occupation by Use and Setdement has 
followed upon discovery, it is a clear proposition of 
Law, that there exists that corporeal possession {cor- 
poralis quaedam possessio [Grotius] detentio corporalis 
[Bynkershoek] which confers an exclusive title upon 
the occupant, and the Dominium eminens, as Jurists 
speak, upon the country whose agent he is." 

In the light of the above statements of Interna- 
tional Law by two of the leading statesmen of Eng- 
land, Canning and Wellington, at the time she nego- 
dated the Anglo-Muscovite treaty of 1825, as well 
as the above quotation from an English international 
jurist of such world wide repute as Phillimore, by 
what acts have Russia, England and the United 
States demonstrated their respective rights of occu- 
pancy to the territory included in the unbroken 
Alaskan lisiere ? 

On the one hand the British Government, up to the 
Quebec Conference, at least, has not claimed that 
either through British officials or subjects it ever 
actually occupied any part of the American territory 
to which it formally laid claim at the Quebec Confer- 
ence in 1898. Instead of this the British Authorises 
recognized both by English and Canadian official 
maps, by confirming the lease of the Russian Ameri- 



OCCUPATION BY RUSSIA. 1 55 

can Company to the Hudson's Bay Company of the 
unbroken lisiere on the main land from Cross Sound 
down to fifty four degrees forty minutes, by numerous 
acts of British officials and even by English and Ca- 
nadian state papers, that the British Empire had not 
rights of occupancy in the Alaskan lisiere. 

On the other hand, both the Muscovite and the 
United States Governments enforced their right to 
the lisiere by actual acts of occupancy and sover- 
eignty in the territory to which the English Empire 
now lays claim. In the first place, as soon after the 
promulgation of the treaty of 1825 as the necessary 
information could be collected and arranged, the 
Russian Government published in 1827 Krusenstern's 
map showing as Russian territory an unbroken 
strip on the continent down to fifty-four degrees 
forty minutes, and all the interior waters enclosed by 
it. Two years later, in 1829, the Imperial Govern- 
ment in Piadischeff's atlas renewed this claim, and 
subsequently re-asserted it on many other maps, 
such as the map of Russian America in the atlas 
issued in the years 1830 to 1835 by the Russian War 
Office, and that of Tebenkoff published in 1849, ^^^ 
on the official Russian map of 1861. The Russian 
American Company also built forts and established 
trading posts in the lisiere, thus actually occupying 
the territory in question for the purpose of the fur 
trade. Besides, in 1839, the Russian American Com- 
pany leased the strip of coast to the Hudson's Bay 



156 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Company, which was a recognition of the sovereignty 
of Russia in the lisiere by Britain through its author- 
ized agent, the Hudson's Bay Company. And the 
English Government further confirmed the lease. 
This arrangement by lease was renewed in 1849 
for ten years and again in 1859 for a few years, 
and also in 1862 for three years, and then again it 
was extended to 1867. On the map, too, that Sir 
George Simpson exhibited in 1857 before a Parlia- 
mentary Committee and which Parliament ordered 
to be printed, the lisiere was marked according to 
what Russia and since 1867 the United States have 
always claimed as the extent of their territory. At 
the end of the various renewals of the original lease 
the Russian American Company re-entered into pos- 
session of the forts and ports in the strip, thus 
adding again a de facto to its de jure occupation. 
The Russian American Company also received the 
allegiance of the Indians who inhabited the lisiere. 
Soon after the purchase of Alaska by the United 
States in 1867, the Department of State published a 
map of the newly acquired territory, which Charles 
Sumner made use of in his speech in favor of the 
purchase. Upon this map the boundaries of Alaska 
were marked according to the treaty of 1825 so as 
to give to the United States a lisiere thirty miles 
inland on the continent, thereby including in Amer- 
ican territory an unbroken lisiere below Mount Saint 
Elias of the same length and width as was marked 



OCCUPATION BY THE UNITED STATES. 1 57 

upon the Russian maps. When Alaska was trans- 
ferred in 1867, a small force of United States troops 
immediately occupied Sitka, Port Tongas and other 
posts. The United States have established and main- 
tained, since the transfer, customs posts in the lisiere 
and collected revenue in it. The United States rev- 
enue cutters have patrolled the inland waters sur- 
rounded by the lisiere. The United States have 
received the unquestioned allegiance of the Indians 
in the lisiere. Americans established mission schools 
towards the head of the Lynn Canal in the early 
eighties. In the United States census of 1880, and 
also in that of 1890, the Indians living in the lisiere 
were publicly and officially returned as part of the 
population of the United States. In addition, under 
the protection of the United States Government, 
American citizens settled in and occupied the lisiere 
on the main land ; they built towns within the pan- 
handle ; and they founded and developed industrial 
enterprises in the strip.^^ 

Thus it becomes apparent that while the United 
States have actually occupied and made use of the 
Alaskan lisiere — as Russia had begun to occupy and 
use the strip before the sale in 1867 to the United 
States — both Great Britain and Canada not only by 

"^A good deal of information about the value and wealth of 
Alaska is given in a paper read by Mr. Donald Fletcher of 
Seattle at the Trans- Mississippi Commercial Congress at Saint 
Paul, Minn., 1902. Printed at Seattle, Washington. 



158 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

many official acts confirmed the belief of Russia and 
the United States that the lisiere was continuous and 
included all the sinuosities above fifty-four forty in 
their entirety, but also abstained from all attempts — 
except under the form of a lease of the lisiere by 
the Hudson's Bay Company from the Russian Amer- 
ican Company — to occupy and make use of the strip. 
The title to an unbroken lisiere on the continental 
shore has thus received an important confirmation 
through prescription. 

Sir Robert Phillimore thus speaks of title by pre- 
scription : ^^ 

" The practice of nations, it is not denied, proceeds 
upon the presumption of Prescription, whenever there 
is scope for the admission of that doctrine. The same 
reason of the thing which introduced this principle 
into the civil jurisprudence of every country, in 
order to quiet possession, give security to property, 
stop litigation, and prevent a state of continued bad 
feeling and hostility between individuals, is equally 
powerful to introduce it, for the same purposes, 
into the jurisprudence which regulates the inter- 
course of one society with another. 

Wfjt 9^ wg^ fffi ^S* 'J^ 

"In other words, there is an International Pre- 
scription, whether it be called Immemorial Posses- 
sion, or by any other name. The peace of the world, 

" Commentaries upon International Law, by Sir Robert Philli- 
more, 1879, London. Third Edition, Volume I., pages 361-363. 



PRESCRIPTION. 159 

the highest and best interests of humanity, the ful- 
filment of the ends for which States exist, require 
that this doctrine be firmly incorporated in the 
Code of International Law." 

After citing with approval upon this point Grotius 
and Vattel, Phillimore continues : 

" But that Prescription is the main pillar upon 
which the security of national property and peace 
depends, is as incontrovertible a proposition as that 
the property and peace of individuals rest upon the 
same doctrine." 

Phillimore then gives his sanction to a passage of 
Henry Wheaton upon this subject in the following 
manner: ^^ 

"To these remarks should be added the observa- 
tion of a great modern jurist: — 

* ' ' The general consent of mankind has established 
the principle, that long and uninterrupted possession 
by one nation excludes the claim of every other. 
Whether this general consent be considered as an 
implied contract or as positive law, all nations are 
equally bound by it, since all are parties to it, since 
none can safely disregard it without impugning its 
own title to its possessions ; and since it is founded 
upon mutual utility, and tends to promote the gen- 
eral welfare of mankind.' " 

Concerning the perfection and the loss of title 

^ Commentaries upon International Law by Sir Robert Philli- 
more, 1879, London. Third Edition, Volume I., page 365. 



l60 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

to territory through prescription, Alphonse Rivier, 
holds : '' 

" Does a State lose the right to make good its 
sovereignty upon territory, owing to a prolonged 
omission ? 

ate <e Cg alg ^ •!« 

*^ •T" 's* ^* '^ •(* 

"There is no doubt, nevertheless, that a State 
which during a considerable lapse of time remains 
silent concerning its real or pretended right and ac- 
cepts the injury (lesion) without protest or resistance, 
appears to renounce this right or these pretensions, 
abandoning them, and acquiescing in the contrary pre- 
tensions. It must be said for prescription as for oc- 
cupation : the Laws of Nations do not make history 
retrace its steps ; it sanctions, on the contrary, the 
state of things that the evolution of history has cre- 
ated and time has consecrated." 

Edmund Burke, too, recognized in the following 

^ ' ' Un Etat perd-il le droit de faire valoir sa souverainet6 sur 
un territoire, par I'effet d'une omission prolongee? 

* * * :ic * * * 

" II n'est pas douteux, n^anmoins, que I'Etat qui pendant un 
laps de temps consid6rable garde le silence sur son droit vrai ou 
pr^tendu et accepte la lesion sans protestation ni resistance, parait 
renoncer a ce droit ou a ces pretentions, les abandonner, et ac- 
quiescer aux pretentions contraires. On doit le dire pour la pre- 
scription comme pour 1' usucapion : le droit des gens ne fait pas 
rebrousser chemin k V histoire, il sanctionne au contraire 1' ^tat de 
choses que revolution historique a cr^e et que le temps a consa- 
cre." Principes du Droit des Gens, par Alphonse Rivier, Consul 
General de la Confederation Suisse ^ Bruxelles : Paris, 1896, Vol- 
ume I., page 220. 



PRESCRIPTION. l6l 

passage that prescription is a part of the Law of 
Nations :^<^ 

"If it were permitted to argue with power, might 
one not ask one of these gentlemen, whether it would 
not be more natural, instead of wantonly mooting 
these questions concerning their property, as if it were 
an exercise in law, to found it on the solid rock oi pre- 
scriptio7i? — the soundest, the most general, the most 
recognized title between man and man that is known in 
municipal or in public jurisprudence ; a title in which 
not arbitrary institutions but the eternal order of things 
gives judgment; a title which is not the creature, but 
the master of positive law ; a title which, though not 
fixed in its term, is rooted in its principles in the Law 
of Nature itself, and is indeed the original ground of 
all known property ; for all property in soil will always 
be traced back to that source, and will rest there. 
* * * These gentlemen, for they have lawyers 
amongst them, know as well as I that in England we 
have had always a prescription or limitation, as all 
nations have against each other. * * * All titles 
terminate in Prescription." 

When it is remembered that for a period of more 
than seventy years — all through the Russian posses- 
sion of Russian America from 1825 to 1867 and the 
United States occupation of Alaska from the latter 
date until the Quebec Conference convened in 1898 — 

"" Edmund Burke, Volume IX. , page 449. Letter to R. Burke, 
Esq. 



1 62 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

the British Empire made no formal protest against 
the right of sovereignty to a continuous, unbroken 
Hsiere on the mainland from fifty-four degrees forty 
minutes in the south up to Mount Saint Elias in 
the north which first the Muscovite Empire and 
afterwards the American Republic openly asserted ; 
and that on the contrary the British Empire not 
only passively assented to that right of sovereignty 
exercised in the continuous lisiere first by Russia 
and afterwards by the United States, but also again 
and again actually confirmed it ; it becomes clear 
that the United States, had they no other legal 
grounds upon which to base their right to the un- 
broken lisiere on the continental shore, would have 
obtained by prescription a good title to that strip. 

In a conference held at Washington on May 30th, 
1898, between ex-Secretary of State John W. Foster 
and Reciprocity Commissioner John A. Kasson, rep- 
resenting the United States, and Sir Julien Paunce- 
fote, the British Ambassador, and Sir Louis Davies, 
a member of the Canadian Ministry, acting for the 
British Empire, the United States and Great Britain 
agreed to appoint a Joint High Commission to con- 
sider and arrange upon a basis more favorable for 
both sides commercial reciprocity, the Bering Sea 
seal question and other important subjects. 

The Commission met and organized for business 
at Quebec, August 23d, 1898. The American Com- 
missioners were Senator Fairbanks, of Indiana, Chair- 



THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE. 1 63 

man, Senator Gray of Delaware, Representative Ding- 
ley of Maine, ex-Secretary of State Foster of Indiana, 
Reciprocity Commissioner Kasson of Iowa, and T, 
Jefferson Coolidge of Massachusetts, ex-Minister to 
France. The British Commissioners were Baron 
Herschel, Lord High Chancellor of England, Chair- 
man, Sir Wilfred Laurier, Premier of Canada, Sir 
Richard Cartright, Canadian Minister of Trade and 
Commerce, Sir Louis Davies, Canadian Minister of 
Marine and Fisheries, and Sir James T. Winter, 
Premier of Newfoundland. 

Soon after the Commission met at Quebec, the 
British Government claimed that the eastern bound- 
ary of Alaska should run from the extremity of 
Prince of Wales Island at fifty- four degrees forty 
minutes, along the estuary marked on recent maps 
as Pearse Canal to the head of the Portland Chan- 
nel, from there straight to the coast, and then along 
the mountains nearest to the shore and across all 
the sinuosities of the sea that advance into the con- 
tinent up to Mount Saint Elias. (See Map No. 2.) 

The subject of the boundary between Alaska and 
Canada was discussed at length. Mr. Foster we 
know, from his article on the subject and the ability 
he has displayed in many important posts at home 
and abroad, presented the American point of view 
with force and learning. And Lord Herschel we 
can be sure, judging from his long and distin- 
guished record as a jurist and a judge, made the 



164 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

most of the Canadian contention. But the Commis- 
sioners, after many sessions extending over several 
months, were unable to agree as to the meaning of 
the language of the treaty of 1825. The British Com- 
missioners then proposed " a conventional boundary, 
by which Canada should receive, by cession or per- 
petual grant, Pyramid Harbor," on the Lynn Canal, 
and a '* strip of land connecting it with Canadian 
territory to the northwest" and the rest of the 
boundary to be drawn about as the United States 
claimed it should be. This plan the American Com- 
missioners refused. The British representatives then 
asked for the submission of the whole territory in 
dispute to the arbitration of three jurists of repute, 
one chosen by the United States and one by Great 
Britain, and the third by these two. These judges, 
the Anglo-Canadian Commissioners desired should 
be governed in making their decision by the follow- 
ing rules : ^^^ 

" (a) Adverse holding or prescription during a 
period of fifty years shall make a good title. The 
arbitrators may deem exclusive political control of a 
district, as well as actual settlement thereof, sufficient 
to constitute adverse holding or to make title by pre- 
scription. 

^"^ Sessional Papers, Volume 14, Session 1899, Volume 
XXXIII. (99). Boundary between Alaska and Canada. Pro- 
tocol No. LXIII. of the Joint High Commission, Washington, 
respecting the boundary between Alaska and Canada. Febru- 
ary 1 8th, 1899. 



THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE. I 65 

''(b) The arbitrators may recognize and give effect 
to rights and claims resting on any other ground 
whatever valid according to international law, and 
on any principles of international law which the ar- 
bitrators may deem to be applicable to the case, 
and which are not in contravention of the forego- 
ing rule. 

" {c) In determining the boundary line, if territory 
of one party shall be found by the tribunal to have 
been at the date of this treaty in the occupation of 
the subjects or citizens of the other party, such effect 
shall be given to such occupation as reason, justice, 
the principles of international law, and the equities 
of the case, shall, in the opinion of the tribunal, 
require." 

The United States Commissioners, while ready to 
accept arbitration with rules '*a" and "b" desired 
rule "c" to read — in order to make it conform with 
the local conditions in Alaska — thus : 

** In considering the ' coast ' referred to in said 
treaties, mentioned in Article III. [the treaties of 
1825 and 1867], it is understood that the coast of 
the continent is intended. In determining the bound- 
ary line, if territory of one party shall be found by 
the tribunal to have been at the date of this treaty 
in the occupation of the subjects or citizens of the 
other party, such effect shall be given to such occu- 
pation as reason, justice, the principles of inter- 
national law and the equities of the case shall, in 



1 66 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

the opinion of the tribunal, require ; and all towns 
and settlements on tide water, settled under the au- 
thority of the United States and under the jurisdic- 
tion of the United States at the date of this treaty, 
shall remain within the territory and jurisdiction of 
the United States." 

To this change in rule " c," the Anglo-Canadian 
representatives replied they could not agree. They 
objected to the declaration added to the first part of 
rule "c," which ran as follows: "In considering the 
* coast ' referred to in said treaties, mentioned in 
Article III. [the treaties of 1825 and 1867], it is 
understood that the coast of the continent is under- 
stood." 

Commenting on the above quotation, the Bridsh 
Commissioners said : "while it was probably intended 
only by this clause that the line should be drawn 
upon the continent, the language used is open to 
misconception." In addition they objected to the 
words " that all towns or settlements on tide water, 
settled under the audiority of the United States and 
under the jurisdiction of the United States at the 
date of this treaty, shall remain within the territory 
and jurisdicdon of the United States," as a marked 
and important departure from the rules that governed 
the Venezuela boundary question. 



102 



102 



Concerning the Venezuela Boundary question, see the article 
by ex-President Cleveland in The Century, Volume LXII., New- 
Series Volume XL., May to October, 1901. 



THE QUEBEC CONFERENCE. I 67 

The American Commissioners then inquired whether 
the Anglo-Canadian representatives would consider 
the selection of an umpire from the American con- 
tinent. The British Commissioners answered that 
they considered such a choice as " most objection- 
able." 

"The American commissioners declined the Brit- 
ish plan of arbitration, and stated that there was 
no analogy between the present controversy and 
the Venezuelan dispute ; that in the latter case the 
occupation of the territory in question had from the 
beginning been followed by the constant and re- 
peated protests and objections of Venezuela, and the 
controversy was one of long standing ; but that in 
the case of the Alaskan territory there had been 
a peaceful and undisputed occupation and exercise of 
sovereignty for more than seventy years, and that no 
question respecting this occupation and sovereignty 
had been raised by the British Government until " 
the Joint High Commission was appointed. " They 
challenged their British colleagues to cite a single 
instance in history where a subject attended with 
such circumstances " was submitted to arbitration. 
But the United States representatives offered to sub- 
mit the dispute to the decision of three judges of the 
highest standing from each country. With the pro- 
vision, however, that as territorial questions touched 
so vitally the sovereignty of nations, a binding 
decision could only be given by four of the six 



1 68 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

judges. The British Commissioners, however, rejected 
this plan of the American Commissioners. ^^^ The 
position of America on the one hand, and of 
Canada and Britain on the other, concerning the 
Alaskan boundary question, are well summed up 
in the words of Nesselrode in 1824: " Ainsi nous 
voulons conserver, et les Compagnies Angloises 
veulent acquerir." (Thus we wish to retain, 
and the English companies wish to acquire). 
The Joint High Commission adjourned in March, 
1899, and the boundary question was referred to the 

^"^ The Canadians in their anxiety to have their claims to Ameri- 
can territory submitted to an " impartial ' ' arbitration seem to 
forget entirely that in 1899 Britain refused the offer of the South 
African RepubHc to refer the differences pending between those 
two powers to an " impartial" arbitration, and that afterwards 
Canada sent troops to aid in bringing the Transvaal and the 
Orange Free State under the dominion of the British Crown. The 
Transvaal offered to submit the differences with England to a 
Court composed of two arbitrators, nominated by the two govern- 
ments respectively, who "shall agree respecting a third person, 
who shall act as President of the arbitration tribunal," which 
should decide in every case by a majority vote. 

Sir Alfred Milner, in submitting this proposal to his Govern- 
ment, wrote : — 

" It is evident that this third person will virtually decide every- 
thing, and it is provided that he shall ' not be a subject of one of 
the arbitrating parties, ' i. e. , a foreigner. 

"On this ground alone I feel sure her Majesty's Government 
will not accept the proposal. For every reason I think it is de- 
sirable that it should promptly intimate its total inability to enter- 
tain it." 

See extract from Sir Alfred Milner' s dispatch of June 14th, 
1899, to his Home Government : T/ie Times, London, August 
26th, 1899, page 5, 



MODUS VIVENDI, OCTOBER 20, 1 899. 1 69 

two Governments for further negotiations. Since 
then the Joint High Commission has not met. 

By a modus vivendi agreed upon on October 20, 
1899, between the American Secretary of State 
and the British Charge d' Affaires at Washington, 
the actual occupation of territory about the head of 
the Lynn Canal was decidedly altered.^** No ques- 
tion of territorial jurisdiction about the summit of 
the Lynn Canal arose until the Klondike gold ex- 
citement of 1897. Towards the latter part of that 
year a post of the Canadian Northwest Mounted 
Police was at Lake Tagish at a point called Tagish 
Post many miles to the north of the White and the 
Chilkoot Passes. By the Circular of Instructions 
issued by the Commissioners of Customs of Can- 
ada, December 17th, 1897, ^ merchandise coming 
from the United States into the Northwest Terri- 
tory of Canada must be reported at Tagish Post.-^^^ 
Soon afterwards the Canadian customs post was ad- 
vanced southward to Bennett and then on to the sum- 
mit of the Chilkoot Pass, and afterwards withdrawn to 
Lake Lindeman, which is south of Bennett. In the 
spring of 1898 a United States Customs Post was 

^°* Modus Vivendi between the United States of America and the 
United Kingdom of Great Br'itain and Ireland, fixing a pro- 
visional boundary line between the Territory of Alaska and the 
Dominion of Canada about the Head of Lynn Ca?ial. 

'"' Sessional Papers, Volume XXXIII. (No. 79), 62 Victoria, 
1899. 



170 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

established at the head of Lake Bennett. This point 
was selected because the United States maps of that 
region showed the boundary to be about at that point 
and at the same time it commanded both the White 
Pass and the Chilkoot Trails, so that one post served 
both. As the Canadian officials claimed that the 
American post at Bennett was on Canadian territory 
and they rendered it troublesome for the United 
States officer there to transact his business, the Ben- 
nett post was discontinued, and two officers were 
ordered to establish posts at Lake Lindeman on the 
Chilkoot Trail and at the Log Cabin on the White 
Pass Trail. Owing to the lack of accommodations 
at Lake Lindeman the officer on the Chilkoot Trail 
established himself at the summit of the Chilkoot 
Pass and remained there until travel by that trail 
ceased. The post at the Log Cabin was maintained 
until it was withdrawn according to the modus vivendi 
of October 1899 to the summit of the White Pass. 
Before the 7nodus vivendi came into force, there 
was a Canadian post, called Pleasant Camp, in the 
direction of the Dalton Trail in the valley of the 
Chilcat River, about ten marine leagues, or thirty 
miles inland from the coast line. According to the 
temporary boundary line along the Klaheela River, 
the point of that tetnporary line nearest to the 
neighboring branch or sinuosity of the Lynn Canal 
is much less than ten marine leagues or thirty miles 
inland. (See Map No. 28.) By the terms of the 



Map to acc<37np€irty the Modus Vtveruf^corvoUuled October 20. 189H 
between, the United StxUes wrtd. Great Br itairv,ftxijxg a pro vis ion cU 
bouruiary line between, CojvcLda. and the Territory of Alaska a^oitt 
the head of Lynn^CartxU. 

Pr^yareilin. the Office of ihu (f.S Coast and. Gatdcthc Surycy. Treasury Department . 




Map showing the Modus Vivendi, October 2oth, 1899. 

MAP No. 28. 



172 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

modus vivendi the boundary of American territory- 
was brought nearer to the coast line at three points. 
In agreeing to the summits of the White and the 
Chilkoot Passes as the provisional boundary, the spirit 
of the treaty of 1825 was observed. For at both 
those points there is a natural water shed less than 
ten marine leagues from the coast. But in the region 
of the Dalton Trail, the frontier, to accord with the 
spirit of the Anglo-Muscovite Treaty of 1825, should 
be marked much farther inland than the temporary 
line agreed upon by the modus vivendi. In this 
modus vivendi, the United States acted most gener- 
ously towards the British Empire, which at that time 
was in an awkward position. Only nine days before, 
October nth, war had begun in South Africa be- 
tween the English and the Boers. If, owing to a 
possible clash between American and Canadian 
miners in their hunt for gold in the region of the 
Chilcat River, Britain was anxious for a temporary 
boundary in that valley in order to minimize the 
chances of trouble, it was not the United States that 
was called upon make concessions but rather Eng- 
land and Canada. And yet it was America that 
made all the concessions in this temporary arrange- 
ment. She withdrew her posts at all three points 
and Canada advanced hers correspondingly. 

That the boundary should be surveyed and marked 
out without unnecessary delay so as to prevent a 
possible conflict between American and Canadian 



THE QUESTION OF ARBITRATION. 1 73 

miners there can be no question. There is, how- 
ever, a radical difference, on the one hand, between 
adjusting the inland boundary along the natural 
water-shed or at a distance of ten leagues parallel to 
the sinuosities of the coast by a joint survey and a 
mutual policy of "give and take" so as to round 
off — owing to the multitudinous curves and turns 
that the line following the sinuosities would take — 
the sharp corners, and on the other hand, referring 
to an International Tribunal the recent preposterous 
and unjust claim of Canada to one or more outlets 
on tide water above fifty-four forty. When a joint 
survey of the exact boundary is actually carried out, 
it may prove to be difficult to determine whether at 
certain points there is a natural watershed formed 
by mountains passing inland round the sinuosities. 
This point, which is the only one about which there 
can be an honest difference of opinion, might well 
be referred to the International Court of Arbitration 
at the Hague. 

Since 1623 — whenEmericCruce^"^ urged in his Nou- 
veau Cynee the creation at Venice of an International 
Court of the Nations — and 1625 — when Hugo Grotius 
advocated in his De Jure Belli ac Pads a. mitigation 
of the horrors of war — until now, the development of 
International Arbitration as a means of securing Inter- 
national Peace has been slow and difficult. And it is 

^^^ Em^ric Cruce, by Thomas Willing Balch, Philadelphia, 
Allen, Lane and Scott, 1900, pages 24-37. 



174 "^^^ ALASKA FRONTIER, 

not by trumping up fanciful territorial claims which 
are not based upon facts, and then straining every 
means to bring them for adjudication before an 
International Court that International Peace will be 
promoted through International Arbitration. And 
such is the position of Britain and Canada in their 
efforts to secure one or more outlets on tide water 
above " fifty-four forty." Just as Russia and the 
United States together have possessed and occupied 
an unbroken lisiere on the continent from Mount 
Saint Elias to "fifty-four forty" for much more than 
fifty years, so the British Empire has had possession 
of British Columbia for more than fifty years : and 
what would Canada think if the United States asked 
the Dominion to submit her title to British Colum- 
bia to "an impartial" arbitration? 

While the decision of the Paris Tribunal upon the 
Bering Sea seal fisheries very properly knocked out 
the contentions of sovereignty put forward by the 
United States Government upon an alleged closed sea, 
the Court compromised upon the vital point at issue, 
for it failed to afford adequate protection for the fur 
seals. ^*^^ Evidently, encouraged by this miscarriage of 
justice, the Canadians hope, that — although they have 
no substantial facts with which to support their 
claims — if they claim only enough and then can 

"' Fur-Bearing Animals of Alaska : House of Representatives' 
Report No. 2303, 57th Congress, ist session. 

The Beidler Bill : H. R. 13,387, 57th Congress, ist session. 



THE QUESTION OF ARBITRATION. 1 75 

have their contentions passed upon by an Interna- 
tional Court, they will at least somehow get a port 
somewhere on the Lynn Canal. If Canada obtains 
a deep water harbor there as she desires, she can 
build and fortify a great naval arsenal, from which 
she would menace American commerce with Alaska, 
Siberia and Japan as it steams to and fro across 
the Northern Pacific.^°^ 

^"^ The following letter from the pen of Mr. Frederick W. Seward 
appeared in the New York Tribune, Nov. 14th, 1902: 

A MENACE FROM CANADA, 

MR. SEWARD BELIEVES THAT THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY DISPUTE 
ENDANGERS INTERNATIONAL GOOD FEELING. 

To the Editor of the Tribune : 

Sir: Very few people either in England or the United States 
seem to comprehend the "true inwardness" of the so-called 
' ' Alaska Boundary Dispute. ' ' That is unfortunate, for it contains 
the germ of a grave national danger. The average newspaper 
reader supposes it to be a dispute over a few acres or square miles 
of wild land, perhaps frozen, on either side of an imaginary line. 
But it is not a boundary dispute of that sort. The boundary was 
established years ago by treaties in which both nations took part. 
What the Canadian schemers are pushing for now is "an outlet 
to tidewater" by means of a harbor on the Lynn Canal. 

What is the Lynn Canal ? It is a great estuary, broad and 
deep, like the lower Hudson or the Delaware. It traverses 
Southern Alaska and is the chief artery of commerce. It is the 
thoroughfare by which all traders, miners and travellers reach the 
valley of the Yukon, unless they make a two thousand mile voyage 
around by the ocean. 

What is the harbor that the Canadian schemers covet ? It is 
one of the most important strategic points on our Pacific Coast. 
It is a deep, wide, semi-circular basin, safe in all weathers, open 
to navigation all the year round, with easy access to the sea, large 



176 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 



109 



Canada wishes, and she has the support of England, 
to have her claim — that she is entitled to many outlets 
upon tide water above fifty-four degrees forty minutes 
— submitted to the arbitration of third parties. The 
United States should never agree to any such arrange- 
ment. If such a plan were adopted and a decision 
were given altogether against Canada, she would be 

enough to float not only trading craft, but the cruisers and battle- 
ships of the British navy. It is surrounded by mountain heights 
which, when fortified, would render it impregnable. In a word, 
what they want is to establish a naval and commercial port for 
Great Britain, resembling Gibraltar or Aden — and to establish it 
in the heart of an American Territory, at the head of its inland 
navigation ! The power owning such a stronghold might well 
claim to dominate the North Pacific. It would cut Alaska Terri- 
tory in two parts, with British forts and custom houses between, 
controlling their intercourse with each other and with the outside 
world. Compared with such a stronghold Esquimault or Halifax 
is of minor consequence. That port is the objective point that 
Canadian schemers are working for. That is what they hope to 
extort from us by threats or cajolery. They know what they are 
about ; apparently we do not ; at least, they hope so. So they 
muddle the question with specious pretenses of harmless purpose, 
by which to "outwit the Yankees." 

When this monstrous demand, without a shadow of foundation, 
was first put forward it brought to a sudden check the work of 
the Joint High Commission to settle questions between Canada 
and the United States. If persisted in it will do more than that. 
It will tend to break up the present era of good feeling between 
the two branches of the English speaking race — an era so full of 
promise for both nations and for the whole civilized world. 

The whole ' ' claim " is so preposterous and absurd that it would 

^"^ Baron Herschel, Lord High Chancellor of England, presented 
the argument for the Canadian territorial claims to the Anglo- 
American Joint High Commission. 



THE QUESTION OF ARBITRATION. 177 

no worse off than she has been from 1825 to the pres- 
ent day, while anythuig decided in her favor would 
be a clear gain to her. This country, on the contrary, 
cannot by any possibility obtain more than she now 
has, viz., that which she purchased from Russia in 1867 
and to all of whose rights she succeeded ; at the same 
time the United States can lose heavily. For the in- 
clusion in Canadian territory of only one port.^^^^ like 

hardly be credible if we did not know how silly and blind to their 
own interests great governments may sometimes be. The Cana- 
dian " statesmen " who are pressing it are blind leaders of the 
blind. They are like children playing with fire. They do not 
realize the far-reaching consequences of the conflagration they are 
trying to kindle. For it is not to be believed that the American 
people, when roused to an understanding of the question, are 
ever going to acquiesce in the construction of a Gibraltar in their 
own waters by any foreign power. American patience is great and 
American good nature is proverbial, but even these have limits. 

FREDERICK W. SEWARD. 
MoNTROSE-ON-THE-HuDSON, November, 1902. 

"" Mr. Alexander Begg in his article, Review of the Alaskan 
Boundary Question (December, 1900, page 24), published at 
Victoria, British Columbia, refers to the strategic importance 
for the British Empire of having some port north of fifty-four 
forty. He says : 

' ' The strategic importance of that portion of British Colum- 
bia now under review should be evident to every intelligent stu- 
dent of the map. The day will assuredly come, in the not very 
distant future, when new lines of railway and telegraph will cross 
the Canadian half of the continent, and these lines which under 
the new Imperial Policy will make Canada the western highway 
of the Empire, must play a large part in its consolidation. Can 
we afford, therefore, to allow valuable strategic and commercial 
points on the Pacific Coast to pass into the hands of a foreign 
nation, when by treaty rights they are unquestionably British ? ' ' 



178 THE ALASKA FRONTIER. 

Pyramid Harbor or Dyea on the Lynn Canal, would 
gready lessen for the United States the present and 
future value of the Alaskan lisiere. The evidence in 
the case is overwhelmingly on the side of the United 
States and shows that they are entitled, by long, un- 
interrupted occupancy and other rights, to an unbroken 
strip of land on the continent from Mount Saint Elias 
down to the Portland Channel. There is no more 
reason for the United States to allow their rio^ht to the 
possession of this unbroken Alaskan lisiere to be 
referred to the decision of foreign judges, than would 
be the case if the British Empire advanced a claim to 
sovereignty over the coast of the Carolinas or the port 
of New York and proposed that this demand should be 
referred to the judgment of subjects of third Powers. 
If the demand of Canada to Alaskan territory is re- 
ferred to foreigners for settlement, the United States 
can gain nothing, while they will incur the risk of 
losing territory over which the right of sovereignty of 
Russia and then of the United States runs back un- 
challenged for much more than half of a century. 
If France advanced a claim to the Isle of Wight and 
then asked England to refer her title to the island 
to the arbitration of foreigners, would Great Britain 
consent? And for the English Empire to make a 
demand to many outlets upon tide water on the 
northwest coast of America above fifty-four degrees 
forty minutes and then ask the United States to 
submit this claim to the arbitration of the citizens 



THE POLICY FOR THE UNITED STATES. 1 79 

of third Powers, is a similar case. Whether the 
frontier should pass over a certain mountain top or 
through a given gorge is a proper subject for set- 
tlement by a joint survey ; and by a mutual policy 
of give and take in an exchange of the interlap- 
ping bits of territory, the sharp corners produced by 
a line run parallel to the indentations of the shore 
could be done away with.^^'^ But by no possibility has 
Canada any right to territory touching tide water 
above fifty-four degrees forty minutes. 

'" On this point see the Bayard, Phelps, Salisbury correspond- 
ence in 18S5 and 1886. Senate, Ex. Doc. No. i^j, ^(pth Con- 
gress, ist Session, page 14. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



Just as the book itself is printed, the Public 
Ledger, Philadelphia, Tuesday, February 17th, 1903, 
page I , publishes the following article : 

"ALASKA BOUNDARY PROOF. 

"President and Secretary of War Find it 
IN A British Map. 

"Washington, Feb. 16. — An interesting discov- 
ery was made yesterday by President Roosevelt and 
Secretary Root in regard to the Alaska boundary. 
As they were speaking of the labors of the Alaska 
Boundary Commission, of which Mr. Root is a mem- 
ber, they consulted the large geographical globe that 
stands near the Cabinet table. 

" The globe is so big that the map of Alaska 
appears on a large scale, and they easily traced the 
boundary line between that Territory and the British 
possessions. To their surprise they found that the 
boundary as shown there sustains the contention of 
the United States in all particulars, although it was 
prepared under the direction of the British Admi- 
ralty." 

(181) 



1 82 POSTSCRIPT. 

The fact that the British Admiralty sustains the 
United States claim in Alaska, was discovered in 
London by my brother, Mr. Edwin Swift Balch, 
who found British Admiralty Chart No. 787, cor- 
rected up to August, 1898. I bought the copy 
from which Map No. 22 is reproduced September 
1st, 1 90 1, at Edward Stanford's in London. This 
chart was referred to and its importance explained 
in an article by the writer La Frontiere Alasko- 
Canadieime, which was printed at the beginning 
of the first number of the Revue de Droit Inter- 
natio7ial at Brussels for the year 1902 (Second 
Series, Vol. IV., page 17). This chart was also 
cited as evidence by the writer in a letter of Janu- 
ary 27th, 1902, which was published in the Nation of 
New York, February 6th, 1902, and in the Evening 
Post, February 7th, 1902. The part of this chart 
showing the Alaska-Canada frontier was repro- 
duced in the article The Alasko- Canadian Frontier 
in The Journal of the Franklin Institute for March 
1902 (Vol. 153, No. 3, page 183), and from that 
article the map was reproduced in The Philadelphia 
Times (since merged in the Public Ledger) of April 
6th, 1902. During the past ten months, this chart 
has been referred to over and over again by the 
newspapers of the United States. 

The same chart, corrected to August, 1901, (see 
Map No. i) is cited in this monograph for the first 
time as evidence, and is referred to in reviews of 



POSTSCRIPT. 183 

this book in the Public Ledger and The Press, of 
Philadelphia, to-day, February 22. 



On January 24th, 1903, a convention was signed 
at Washington by Secretary of State, John Hay, 
and the English Ambassador Sir Michael Herbert. 
It was ratified by the Senate, and became a treaty 
on February nth, 1903. The treaty provides that 
the question of the Alaska-Canada boundary shall 
be referred to a Commission or Tribunal of six 
jurists, three to be appointed by the United States, 
and three by Great Britain. King Edward the 
Seventh, in his speech opening Parliament on Feb- 
ruary 17th, said that the treaty referred the frontier 
question to "an arbitral tribunal." But as an even 
number of Americans, and Britons or Canadians 
are to sit on the Commission, it can hardly be said 
that the subject is referred to an arbitration. 

The American Commissioners, in making up their 
opinion must consider the acts of Canada and of 
England, the official Canadian Government maps 
and the British Admiralty charts. Moreover, the 
new treaty provides that the French or official ver- 
sion of Articles III., IV. and V. of the Anglo- 
Russian Treaty of February 16-28, 1825, shall be 



1 84 POSTSCRIPT. 

used in deciding what arrangement the Muscovite 
and the British Empires agreed upon in that in- 
strument ; and in the last part of Article IV., the 
phrase " parallele aux sinuosites de la cote " is re- 
published correctly. This phrase especially, makes 
it incumbent upon the three American Commis- 
sioners not to yield to Canada an outlet to salt 
water anywhere above the Portland Channel. 

T. W. B. 

Philadelphia, Washington's Birthday, 1903. 



INDEX. 



INDEX. 



PAGK. 



Adams, Charles Francis ^° 

Agreement of neutrality during Crimean War ... 49. 5°. 5i 
' ' Ainsi nous voulons conserver, et les Compagnies Angloises 

veulent acquerir." • Title page, xiii, 15, 168 

Alabama, The "° 

Alabama Arbitration, The °4 

Alaska . X, xi, 9, 21, 52, 55, 57, 58, 73, 74, 7^, 89, 93, 94, 181 

Alasko- Canadian Frontier, The xi, 151, 182 

Alexander the First, The Emperor 3 

Alexander the Second, The Emperor, 35, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 173 

America ^. 

Andrews, C. L ^^ 

Anglo-Russian negotiations 9, io> 12, 13, H, i5, 16 

Anian, Strait of ^ 

Appleton, Mr 57 

Arbitration, International . . 168, 173, 174, 176, ^77, 178, i79 

Arbitration of the z«/a/z^ boundary 172, 1 73 

Arrowsmith, John 35, 38, 74, 1^5 

Article Fourth of the Treaty of 1824 . ...... .140, Hi 

Article III. of the Treaty of 1825 6, 8 

Article IV. of the Treaty of 1825 8 

Article VI. of the Treaty of 1825 39 

Article VII. of the Treaty of 1825 4i 

Article XI. of the Treaty of 1825 4° 

Bagot, Sir Charles . 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, ioo> io7, 126, 142 

Bagot's three propositions 10, 12, 13 

Balch, Mr. Edwin Swift x»' 1^2 

Balch, Mr. T.W ii3, "4 

Balls given to Russian officers 66, 67 

Banks, General ^" 

Barker, Mr. Wharton ^4 

(187) 



1 88 INDEX. 



PAGE 



Barnes, Mr. T. W 64 

Bayard, Thomas F 93, 94, 95 

Begg, Mr. Alexander 109, no, m, 112, 113, 114 

Behm's Canal 104 

Benjamin, Judah P 59 

Bennett, Lake 169, 170 

Bentinck, Family of 106, 107 

Bering 2 

Bering Sea 3, 5, 18 

Bering Strait 2, 76 

Bigelow, Mr. John 64 

Blaine, James G 103 

Bluntschli 121, 122, 123, 138 

Boers, The 172 

Bouchette, Joseph, Jr 27, 29, 74 

Boundary Commission appointed 183 

British Admiralty upholds American claim 151, 181 

British Admiralty Chart No. 787 . Frontispiece, x, 22, 104, 105, 182 

British Admiralty Chart No, 2431 115 

British Admiralty Chart No. 2458 116, 117 

British Columbia 82, 88, 93, 94 

British Empire 8, 9, 35, 95, 1 39, 178 

British Government, see English Government. 

British Government upholds American claim . 22, 148, 151, 152 

Brue, A. H 23, 80, 81, 82, 83 

Brymner, Mr 109, no, in 

Buell, Colonel Augustus C xii, 56, 60 

Burke, Edmund 160, 161 

Burrough's Bay 104 

Bynkershock • • 154 

Cameron, General 146 

Canada 82, 90, 124, 157, 163, 175, 176, 178, 179 

Canadian arguments 99, 125, 131 

Canadian demands . x, 55, 85, 88, 99, 100, 108, 109, 115, 123 

125, 146, 163, 173, 174 

Canadian Government . . ix, 82, 88, 90, 91, 92, 94, 143, 144 

146, 148 



INDEX. 189 



PAGE 



Canadian maps, . 23, 27, 29, 36, 54, 86, 87, 109, no, in, 115 

144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150 

Canadian writers 22, 125 

Canning, George 15, 17, 21, 126, 142, 152 

Canning's hundred miles lisiere 143 

Canning, Sir Stratford 5, 16, 17, 18, 21, 107, 108 

Cape Town 61 

Cartright, Sir James T 163 

Cassiar district, The 88, 89 

Chilkoot Pass, The 169, 170, 172 

Church Missionary Society, The 144, 145 

Civil War, The 58, 63 

Clay, Mr 68 

Clarence Sound, Duke of 13, no, in, 112 

Cleveland, President 92, 102 

Cole, Senator 67 

Colonist^ The 113 

Confederate States, The 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65 

Cook, Captain 2 

Coolidge, Mr. T. Jefferson 163 

Cote, the 131, 132 

Cramp, Mr. Charles H xii, 60 

Cramp, Messrs 66 

Crimean War 5i> 53. 54. 55. 61 

Dall, Professor William H 96, 97, 108, 134, 135 

Dalton Trail 170, 172 

Davies, Sir Louis 162, 163 

Davis, Jefferson 60 

Davis, Mr. L. Clarke xii 

Dawson, Dr. George M 96, 97, 98 

Dennis, Mr. J. S 85, 86, 88 

Deshneff, The Cossack 2 

Devine, Mr. Thomas 146, 147 

Dingley, Representative 163 

Diodorus Siculus 118 

Dionissievsky, Fort Saint 39, 42 

Dyea 178 



190 INDEX. 



PAGE 



Edward the Seventh, King 183 

Em6ric Cruce 173 

England x, i, 3, 4, 16, 18, 21, 23, 176 

English Cabinet 13 

English Government . 5, 27, 35, 39, 40, 51, 52, 54, 60, 74, 88 

92, 94, loi, 143, 148, 154, 163, 169 

English Maps . Frontispiece, x, 19, 30, 32, 34, 35, 38, 76, 77, 79 

80, 82, 104, 105, 115, 116, 144, 145, 148, 151 

Evarts, William M 92 

Explorers, Early ; i, 2, 3 

Farragut, Admiral 63 

Fifty-four forty 6, 22, 44, 55, 71, loi, 173 

" Fifty-four forty or fight " 56 

Fisheries Conference 96 

Foster, The Hon. John W 140, 141, 163 

France i 

Frontiere Alaska- Canadienne, La xi, 182 

Glenora 89 

Gortschakoff, Prince 57. 58, 59, 64, 69 

Grant, President 84, 85 

Granville, Earl of 85 

Gray, Senator 163 

Great Britain 4, 12, 15 

Grotius, Hugo 117, 136, 154, 173 

Gwin, Senator 57, 58 

Hague Court of Arbitration, The 173 

Hall, W. H 118 

Halleck, General 120 

Hay, Secretary John 183 

Herbert, Sir Michael 183 

Herschel, Baron 163, 176 

Hill, Mr. S. S 30 

Hodgins, Mr. Thomas 98, 99, 100, loi, 102, 103 

Holloway, Colonel William R xi 

House of Commons 35, 47, 54 



INDEX. 191 

PAGE 

Hudson's Bay Company . i, 12, 15, 35, 36, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45 

46, 47, 49, 50, 68 
Hunter, Mr. Joseph 90. 9 1 

Inland boundary ^73 

International Law . . .118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 135 
136, 137, 138, 139, 152, 153, 158, 159, 160, 161 

Jackson, General Andrew 5^ 

Johnston, Mr. Arthur i07 

Joint High Commission, Anglo-American . . . . 144, 162, 163 

164, 165 
Journal of the Franklin Institute xi, 151, 182 

Kasson, Mr. John A 162, 163 

Kennedy, Mr. Walker xii 

Kennin, Mr. Frank NichoUs xii 

Krusenstern, Admiral de 23, 24, 25, 27, 74, 77, I55 

Lamar, Lucius Q. C 59,60,61,62 

Lardy, Monsieur 123 

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid 108, 109, iii, 113, 114. 163 

Lessosvky, Admiral 63 

Lewis and Clark i 

Libraries xu 

Lieven, Count 13. 100. 138 

Lindeman, Lake 169, 170 

Lincoln, President 66 

Lisi^re, The . x, 10, 18, 21, 30, 39, 4i> 53. 54, 82, 95, 100, loi 

125, 155,156, 157, 158, 162, 178, 179 

Littre 129, 130, 131, I33 

Log Cabin 170 

Lynn Canal 10, 49, I33, i34, 169, 175, 178 

Marshall, Chief Justice 102 

Martens, von 136 

Martin, Peter 88, 89, 90, 102 

McDonald, Mr, A. L xii 



192 INDEX. 



PAGE 



Meissas and Michelot 127, 128 

Menace from Canada 175, 176 

Mendenhall, Mr. Thomas C xii 

Mer and Ocean 126, 127, 128, 129, 130 

Middleton, Mr 4 

Milner, Sir Alfred 168 

Modus Vivendi, The • • 169, 170, 171, 172 

Mofras, Duflot de 30, 31 

Muscovite Government, see Russian Government. 

Napoleon the Third, The Emperor 60, 61, 63 

Nesselrode, Count . . 4, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 21, 41, 99, 100 

107, 108, 152, 168 

Nesselrode, Letter to Lieven 13. 14 

Nicholas the First, The Emperor 50 

North America i> 52 

Novo-Archangelsk 16, 40 

Nys, Monsieur le Juge xii, 117 

Ocean, see mer. 

Occupation and use 152, 153, 154 

Occupation of lisiere by Russia 155, 156 

Occupation of lisiere by United States 156, 157, 158 

Pacific Ocean i, 2, 3, 4, 5 

Palmerston, Lord 40, 41 

" Parallele aux sinuosites de la cote " . . . 97,98, loi, 102 

131, 134, 184 

Paris Tribunal 174 

Paul, The Emperor 4 

Pauncefote, Sir Julian 162 

Pearse Channel or Canal 115, 163 

Pearse Island 112 

Peirce, Mr. George xii, 64 

Petermaiin' s Mittheilungeii 77 

Phelps, Mr 93. 94. 95 

Phillimore 137. i53. i54. 158. i59 

Phillips, Mr. P. Lee xii 



INDEX. 193 



PAGE 



Piadischeff, Functionary 24, 26, 27, 30, 74, 155 

Poletica, Monsieur de 4, 5, 9, 12, 16, 17, 107 

Politkovsky, General 49 

Polk, President 55, 56 

Popoft", Admiral 67 

Portland Channel or Canal . . 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 18, 21, 23 
24. 71. 73. 77. 82, 85, 86, 87, loi, 102, 103, 104, 105 
106, 107, 108, no, 112, 115, 124, 148, 151, 163, 178, 184 

Prescription 158, 159, 160, 161, 162 

Prior, Colonel E. G 108, 109, in, 112 

Pyramid Harbor 11, 164, 178 

Quebec Conference, The .... 9, 55, 143, 144, 151, 162-169 

Reade, Charles 125 

Revue de Droit International ix, 1S2 

Riddle, Mr. John Wallace xii 

Rivier, Alphonse 119, 128, 160 

Roosevelt, President 181 

Root, Secretary 181 

Russell, Lord John 47 

Russia ... 3. 4. 9. 10. 14. 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 49, 55, 57, 58 

63. 69, 70. 71. 73. 93, 139 
Russian America . 9, 14, 35, 39, 56, 57, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73 
Russian American Company . . 12, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 

46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 67 

Russian fleets 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 72, 73 

Russian Government . . . 5, 9. 27, 35, 39, 40, 41, 51, 54, 59 

62, 64, 69, 72, 144, 155 
Russian official maps ... 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30 

33. 37, 70 
Russian War office 27, 28 

Saint Elias, Mount ... ix, 9, 14, 18, 21, 22, 24, 48, 163, 17S 

Saint Petersburg xi, 4, 5, 20, 23, 24, 60, 68 

Salisbury, The Marquis of 94 

Severin, Count 27 



194 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Seward, Mr. Frederick W 70, 72, 73, 175, 176, 177 

Seward, William H 64, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74 

Shepard, Mr. Edward M. 56 

Siberia i, 2, 24 

Singapore 61 

Sinuosities 98, loi, 102, 131, 132, 133, 134, 173 

Simpson, Sir George . . 30, 32, 35, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53 

54, 55, 156 

Sitka 16 

Skoot River 86, 87 

Spain I 

Stikine River 39, 45, 86, 90, 91 

Stoeckl, Monsieur de 59, 67, 68, 69, 70 

Strategic value of a port to Canada 175, 177 

Sumner, Charles 70, 71, 72, 74 

Tacitus 118 

Tagish, Lake 169 

Taylor, Bayard 59 

Tebenkoff, Captain 30, 33, 155 

Thalweg, The 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122 

Thornton, Sir Edward 82, 85, 88, 91 

Tittmann, Mr. O. H xii 

Tower, The Hon. Charlemagne xii 

Transvaal, The 168 

Treaty of 1824 4, 140, 141 

Treaty of 1825 ... x, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 18, 21, 22, 39, 40, 41 
90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 98, loi, 131, 139, 156, 183 

Treaty of 1867 70, 73 

Tsar, The 2, 61, 68 

Tupper, Sir Charles 97 

Ukase of 1799 4, 14 

Ukase of 1821 4, 14, i8, 138, 152 

United States, The . . i, 3, 4, 9, 22, 35, 52, 68, 69, 88, 141 

157, 178 
United States Government . . 9, 63, 66, 67, 70, 76, 144, 155 



INDEX. 195 



PAGE 



United States map, certified and published by Canadian 

Government 86, 87 

United States maps 7, 11, 74, 75, 156, 171 

Use and settlement 153 

Vancouver, Captain George .... 2, 18, 19, 106, 107, 108 

Van Siclen, Mr. George W xii 

Variag, The 66 

Vattel 159 

Victoria 108 

Wales Island, Prince of .... 10, 12, 13, 14, 100, 104, 163 

Wales Island 115, 117 

Washington, Conference at 162 

Watts, Mr. Harvey Maitland xii 

Weed, Thurlow . .' 63 

Wellington, Duke of 138, 139, 152 

Wheaton, Henry 159 

White Pass, The 169, 170 

Winter, Sir James T 163 

Wrangell Island 39 

Wrangell, Baron 40, 41, 43, 46 

Xenophon 118 



MAPS 



PAGE. 



No. I. British Admiralty Chart No. 787, published June 
2ist, 1877, under the superintendence of Cap- 
tain F. J. Evans, R. N., Hydrographer, and 
corrected to August ist, 1901 . . . . Frontispiece 

No. 2. United States and English boundary claims ... 7 

No. 3. Sir C. Bagot's Three Proposed Boundaries . . n 

No. 4. Vancouver's Chart, 1799 i9 

No. 5. Russian Pilot Chart, 1802 20 

No. 6. Admiral de Krusenstern's Map, 1827 25 

No. 7. Functionary Piadischeff's Map, 1829 26 

No. 8. Map published by the Russian War Office, 1830- 

1835 2^ 

No. 9. Bouchette's Canadian Map, 1831 29 

No. 10. Duflot de Mofras's Map, 1844 31 

No. II. Sir George Simpson's Map, 1847 32 

No. 12. Captain Tebenkoff's Imperial Russian Naval Map, 

1849 33 

No. 13. Hill's Map, 1854 34 

No. 14. Map shown in 1857 by Sir George Simpson ... 36 

No. 15. Imperial Russian Map, 1861 37 

No. 16. Arrowsmith's Map, 1864 38 

No. 17. Map Published by the State Department of the 

United States, 1867 75 

No. 18. Berghaus's Chart of the World, 1871 78 

No. 19. Brum's Map of 1833 81 

No. 20. Brum's Map of 1839 83 

No. 21. Map Published in Canadian Sessional Papers, 1878, 87 
No. 22. British Admiralty Chart, No. 787, published June 
2ist, 1877, under the superintendence of Cap- 
tain F. J. Evans, R. N., Hydrographer, and 

corrected to April, 1898 105 

No. 23. British Admiralty Chart, No. 2458, published De- 
cember 15th, 1896, and corrected to March, 1900 116 

(197) 



198 MAPS. 



PAGE 



No, 24. Map in the Church Missionary Society Proceed- 
ings, 1901 145 

No. 25. Canadian Government Map, 1877 147 

No. 26. Official Canadian Map of British Columbia, 1884 . 149 

No. 27. Canadian Government Map, 1884 150 

No. 28. Map showing the Modus Vivendi, October 20th, 

1899 171 



MAR 17 1903 



